
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

Chap. Copyright No. 

* Id ) 



Shslf 




7 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



A MEMOIR 



OF 



ROBERT C. WINTHROR 







yET.45. 




A.1 70 



A MEMOIR 



OF 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 



PREPARED FOR 



Cjje iflassadnisetts; ©tstortcal g>octetp 

BY 

ROBERT C. WINTHROP, JR. 









BOSTON: 
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY. 

1897. 



Fife 



Copyright, 1897, 
By John Wilson and Son. 



tt- 90 3ff 



University Press: 
John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U.S.A. 






PREFATORY NOTE. 



Hon. Robert C. Winthrop died in Boston, Novem- 
ber 16, 1894, in his eighty-sixth year. The Massachu- 
setts Historical Society — over which he had formerly 
presided for thirty years, and of which he had been a 
member more than half a century — soon after printed 
and circulated the tributes then paid to him by leading 
members, and, in accordance with usage, appointed one 
of their associates to prepare a memoir. This duty fell 
upon the undersigned, and the reason the performance 
of it has been so long delayed, in conformity to Mr. 
"Winthrop' s wishes, is explained in the following pages. 
For the present volume the Society is in no way respon- 
sible. The memoir is issued in a separate form for con- 
venient reference and for distribution among leading 
public libraries and the libraries of learned institutions. 
Any such libraries which do not receive it may, if they 
so desire, communicate with the undersigned. 

Several engravings of Mr. Winthrop — none of them 
wholly satisfactory — have from time to time appeared in 
different publications. Instead of furnishing one which 
has been used before, the experiment has been tried of 
reproducing likenesses of him taken at widely separated 
periods of his life, and which possess, at least, the merit 



vi PREFATORY NOTE. 

of novelty. The earliest is from a medallion by Ball 
Hughes in 1841, the latest is from a snap-shot, in his 
study at Brookline, in 1891. The two which serve as 
a frontispiece represent him at the respective ages of 
forty-five and seventy. 

It may be well to add that the letters from which ex- 
tracts are given were written by him either to intimate 
friends or to near relatives, but it has not been thought 
worth while to take up space by specifying the name 
of the person to whom each particular passage was 
addressed. 

ROBERT C. WINTHROP, Jr. 

10 Walnut Street, Boston. 
September, 1897. 



MEMOIR. 



DOUBTS have been repeatedly expressed with re- 
gard to the wisdom of that rule of this Society 
which exacts a memoir of a deceased member from one 
of his associates. In a body numbering never more 
than one hundred, and often less, it is sometimes diffi- 
cult to procure such service, and the most suitable 
person to perform it is not always within our ranks. 
It seemed to Mr. Winthrop eminently fitting that at 
some meeting following the death of a member there 
should be appropriate recognition of his career and 
character, but he considered that anything of the 
nature of formal biography should be governed by cir- 
cumstances and not obligatory. Such a duty is some- 
times welcome. It was so to him when he wrote for us 
with signal success the memoirs of two of his most 
cherished friends, Nathan Appleton and John Henry 
Clifford, or when he prepared for a kindred Society one 
of the most notable of his commemorative productions, 
his memoir of Henry Clay. He was, moreover, of 
opinion that memoirs prepared for a historical so- 
ciety should carry with them an air of deliberation, 
and that a considerable interval should ordinarily 
elapse between eulogies printed at the time of a mem- 
ber's death and the publication of a detailed narrative 



2 A MEMOIR OF 

of his life. Without seeking to impose his views upon 
others, he specified with distinctness the course to be 
pursued in his own case. Aware that the leading 
events of his career were easily accessible in works 
of reference, 1 foreseeing that he would not merely be- 
come the subject of obituary notices in the newspaper 
press throughout the country, 2 but that one or more of 
the institutions with which he had been actively associ- 
ated would distribute tributes to him in pamphlet form, 3 
he preferred that anything farther in the way of bio- 
graphical commemoration should be postponed. In 
looking back over his exceptionally long life he felt 
that he had received, on the whole, ample recognition 
of any services he might have rendered to the causes of 
religion and philanthropy, or in the fields of history 
and oratory. As a statesman, however, he considered 
that he had not always been fully understood or fairly 
represented, though he realized that the inaccuracies of 
which he sometimes complained were the inevitable 
result of party conflicts, the details of which had been 
imperfectly appreciated by later writers. During a 
political career which began as far back as 1833, he had 
accumulated a mass of correspondence with public men, 
selections from which, if properly annotated, could hardly 

1 The account of him in Appleton's Dictionary of American Biog- 
raphy is the most accurate, as far as it goes. 

2 Nearly five hundred such notices, none of them duplicates, were 
collected for the writer by news-agents. 

8 The most important of these separate tributes may also be found in 
the published Proceedings of this Society and in those of the Peabody 
Trustees. Others may be met with, either in the annual reports of 
learned, charitable, educational, and religious institutions, or in the kind 
words of personal friends, which found their way into print in various 
forms. 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 3 

fail, he believed, to interest and edify future students of 
New England history, but he had no desire that they 
should be printed for a long time to come. His per- 
sonal relations with some of the bitterest of his 
opponents grew amicable in after years ; and as it had 
become his lot to survive both friends and foes, he pre- 
ferred that his departure should not be signalized by 
any unnecessary stirring of the embers of by-gone con- 
troversies. For the customary memoir for this Society 
it would, in his judgment, suffice to furnish a succinct 
narrative of facts and dates for reference, containing 
comparatively little of personal vindication, and still 
less of glowing panegyric. At different periods he 
had prepared a variety of autobiographical material, 
which he never found leisure to arrange or complete. 
Portions of it he from time to time made use of in 
his various productions. Another portion, consisting of 
reminiscences of European celebrities with whom he had 
been well acquainted, he condensed and privately printed 
not long before his death. What remains has been 
drawn upon when necessary in these pages, and may 
one day prove of value in editing his correspondence. 



I. 

Of his ancestry it is enough to say that the great 
Puritan leader, Governor John Winthrop of Massachu- 
setts, had seven sons who lived to manhood, six of 
whom left issue ; but the male lines of the five younger 
ones having gradually become extinct, all descendants 
of the Governor bearing the name of Winthrop now 






4 A MEMOIR OF 

spring from his eldest son, John Winthrop the younger, 
who, after having helped to found the Massachusetts 
Colony, was long Governor of Connecticut, an early 
Fellow of the Royal Society, and one of the most 
accomplished scholars of his time. At the close of the 
Revolutionary War this line was represented by six 
brothers, three of whom preferred to live chiefly in New 
York, one settled in South Carolina, another cast in his 
lot with the mother country, while one only saw fit to 
maintain the hereditary connection of his family with 
Boston, where he lived and died. This was Thomas 
Lindall Winthrop, for many years Lieutenant-Governor 
of this State and President of this Society, who married 
Elizabeth Bowdoin, daughter of Sir John Temple, and 
granddaughter of Governor James Bowdoin of Revolu- 
tionary memory. 1 The Marquis de Chastellux, in his 
" Travels in North America," in 1782, alludes to the 
beauty of this lady when a girl. A portrait by Gilbert 
Stuart gives some idea of the dignity and grace of 
her maturer years, while her son Robert bore lifelong 
testimony to her devotion to her family and earnest, 
unaffected Christian faith. She died in her fifty-first 
year, in 1825, having had fourteen children, of whom 
the subject of this memoir was the youngest ; but he 
survived his brothers and sisters for so long a period 
that in his old age few people remembered that he ever 
had any. It may therefore be well to mention, with- 
out naming them all, that his eldest brother, Thomas, 
had before his early death been in the U. S. Diplomatic 

1 For a memoir of Hon. Thomas L. Winthrop, see the third volume 
of the Transactions of the American Antiquarian Society, of which he 
was also President. A shorter one is in the second volume of the Fourth 
Series of our own Collections. 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 5 

Service ; the next, James (who took the name of Bow- 
doin), was an antiquarian, and an active member of this 
Society ; the third, WilHam, first scholar of his class at 
Harvard, at the time of his death was studying for the 
ministry ; two others, John and Grenville, were mem- 
bers of the Bar and of the Massachusetts Legislature, 
besides successively commanding the Suffolk brigade of 
militia; their married sisters having been Elizabeth, 
wife of Rev. Benjamin Tappan, D. D. ; Sarah, wife of 
Hon. George Sullivan; Augusta, wife of John Smyth 
Rogers of New York; and Anne, second wife of Dr. 
John C. Warren. 

Robert Charles Winthrop was born in Milk Street, 
Boston, May 12, 1809, in the house of his great-uncle, 
Hon. James Bowdoin, then U. S. Minister to Spain and 
Associate Minister to France. 1 His mother was his 
only teacher until he was nearly seven, after which he 
successively attended two private schools, the first kept 
by the estimable Deacon Samuel Greele in what was 
then called Pond Street, the second by an Englishman, 
John Carlton Fisher, who had been an usher at a public 
school in his own country, and to whom Mr. Winthrop 
was always grateful for having instilled into him that 
love of classical scholarship — more particularly of the 
Latin poets — which proved one of the most endur- 

1 For many years after his marriage in 1786, Hon. T. L. Winthrop 
occupied a large house, till recently standing though much degraded, on 
the corner of Sudbury Street and Alden Court. A reverse of fortune 
broke up this establishment, when the Milk Street house was loaned to 
him, but on the return of Mr. Bowdoin from Europe his nephew removed 
to No. 2 Hamilton Place, which then overlooked the Common. Later, 
in 1824, he purchased and much enlarged a house still standing on the 
lower corner of Beacon and Walnut streets, where he lived until his 
death in 1S41. 



6 A MEMOIR OF 

ing pleasures of his life. As Dr. Fisher confined his 
instruction to the ancient languages, Mr. Winthrop at 
the same time studied other branches, first with a 
young William Apthorp, but longer with Warren Col- 
burn, afterward a well-known mathematician. His final 
preparation for College was at the Boston Latin School, 
the head-master of which was then the much respected 
Benjamin Apthorp Gould, of whom Mr. Winthrop was 
the favorite pupil. More than all the prizes of his 
school and college days he valued two sets of volumes 
which came to him unexpectedly at this period. One 
was Murray's edition of the works of Washington 
Irving, a parting personal gift from Master Gould, 
inscribed on the fly-leaf, "Roberto Carolo Winthrop, 
juveni ingenuo, omnibus caro, ac omne laude digno, hoc 
parvulum amoris pignus atque diligentise urbanitatis- 
que premium, datum est ab amico et tutore B. A. G. 
Scholce Latins Bostoniensis, A. D. MDCCCXXIV." The 
other was a fine edition of Sophocles, presented to him 
publicly, with some very complimentary expressions, by 
Mayor Quincy on the platform of Faneuil Hall before 
the dinner to the Franklin Medal scholars, and inscribed, 
" Scholre LatinaB Filio Digno Roberto C. Winthrop, ab 
Urbe, pro meritis datum. MDCCCXXIV." 

Although prepared to pass the entrance examination 
for Harvard at the age of fourteen, he had waited a 
year by his father's desire in order not to precede an 
elder brother less studious than himself; but he now 
took up his residence in Cambridge, which he left in 
1828 with the third honors of a class whose foremost 
scholar was his chum, the short-lived Charles Chauncy 
Emerson, younger brother of Ralph Waldo Emerson, 



ROBERT C. WIXTHROP. 7 

and, in the opinion of many of his contemporaries, a 
man of stronger intellect. In mathematics Mr. Win- 
throp excelled all his classmates, who elected him their "S 
President, but, as Professor Channing told him, he 
" did too many things " to be within reach of a First 
Part. He commanded the military company of the -p 
College, the famous but long extinct " Harvard Wash- 
ington Corps." He presided over the select convivial 
reunions of the Porcellian Club and the Knights of the 
Square Table. He was Orator of the Hasty Pudding 
Club, was alike enrolled among the notorious Med. 
Fac. and the exemplary Phi Beta Kappa ; sang bass in 
the Chapel choir, played a subordinate musical in- 
strument in the concerts of the Pierian Sodalitv, and 
not infrequently stole away to town (quite a little 
journey in those days) to attend some theatrical per- 
formance or social gathering. The only wonder was 
that with all this he managed to secure the Third 
Part, which he signalized by a Commencement oration 
entitled " Public Station." } Immediately after the 
exercises Hon. T. L. Winthrop gave in his son's honor, 
at Porter's Tavern, a large reception, which was at- 
tended by John Quincy Adams, then President, . and 
other persons of distinction, but Andrew Stevenson, 
Speaker of the U. S. House of Eepresentatives, was 
conspicuous by his absence, though he had expressed 
an intention of coming and had been seen among the 
audience. It turned out, drolly enough, that he had 
taken umbrage at a passage in Mr. "Winthrop's oration, 

1 This production, which attracted favorable notice at the time of its 
delivery, was never considered by its author worthy of a place in his 
collected works, but is to be found in the late R. G. Parker's " Aids to 
English Composition." 



8 A MEMOIR OF 

where, quoting from the Psalms of David, " promotion " 
had been described as coming " neither from the East, 
nor from the West, nor yet from the South." The 
Virginia statesman, perhaps half asleep and probably 
more familiar with politics than Holy Writ, had got 
it into his head that this was intended as a compliment 
to President Adams and the North, in disparagement 
of other sections of the Union. 

I find but five letters written to Mr. Winthrop at this 
period by college friends. Three of them are little notes 
from Charles Emerson; the fourth is an entertaining 
account of a night passed in a Methodist camp meeting 
on Cape Cod, by Thomas Kemper Davis; the fifth a 
scrap which I insert here only because the writer, with 
other titles to remembrance, became a valued Recording 
Secretary of this Society. 

Dearly Beloved, — As touching the points of faith and 
conduct whereof you have enquired of me, it has seemed 
good to me to vouchsafe the following reply. As to the 
time when, good. As to the place where, very excellent 
good. As to the quantity, half a dozen. As to the brand, 
Forrest Rheims. As to the place from which, Parker and 
Codman's. And now, most excellent Theophilus, having 
resolved thy doubts and confirmed thy faith, I commend me 
to thee and commend thee. 

Edmund, to my brothers and sisters, 
Quince, to my familiars, 
and Edmund Quincy, Esquire, to all Europe. 

Having thus obtained a bachelor's degree at the age 
of nineteen, he soon after entered the law-office of 
Daniel Webster, where his fellow-student was his friend 
Davis, and where he remained until his admission to the 



ROBERT C. WTNTHROP. 9 

Suffolk Bar in 1831. "Webster was then Senator from 
Massachusetts and necessarily much in Washington, the 
local business being attended to by his junior partner. 
Even when at home he was generally too busy to give 
much attention to his students, whose duties were to 
copy papers, look up cases, and prepare briefs ; but he 
repeatedly complimented them on their diligence and 
on one occasion magnanimously assured them that he 
had won a case in the United States Supreme Court 
with a brief prepared by them, which he had only found 
time to read at the last moment. At very long inter- 
vals he discoursed a little on the great principles of 
jurisprudence, more often favored them with a passing 
insight into contemporary politics, but whatever he 
touched upon was always interesting and impressive. 
To Mr. Winthrop, who had listened with enthusiasm to 
Webster's address on Bunker Hill in 1825 and to his 
immortal eulogy on Adams and Jefferson in the follow- 
ing year, conceiving thereby a profound admiration for 
his intellect and oratory, this daily association with that 
illustrious man during a large part of three successive 
years was a source of unmixed pleasure. He cannot, 
however, be said to have consumed any appreciable 
amount of midnight oil in that unwearying study of the 
law which has characterized so many of its votaries. 
After dark and even before dark he cultivated fashion- 
able society with some degree of assiduity, became a 
manager of subscription-balls, wore some of the most 
conspicuous of the party-colored waistcoats then in 
vogue, and, according to one of his sisters, devoted an 
unconscionable time to the art of tying voluminous 
cravats. He exhibited, too, a martial ardor on receiv- 



> 



10 A MEMOIR OF 



M 



\ 



ing a commission in the State Militia, serving first as 
ensign and then as lieutenant in the Boston Light 
Infantry, familiarly known as " Tigers," a corps which 
he soon after commanded. He contributed now and 
then to periodical literature, the first sum of money he 
ever earned having been eight dollars (at the regular 
compensation of one dollar a page) for an article on 
" American Annals " in the " North American Review ; " 
but a previous article on " Temperance Pledges," in the 
" New England Magazine," not only elicited no pay at all, 
but became the subject of some animadversion from tee- 
totalers. When the time came for putting up a sign in 
Court Street, as was the custom of young counsellors 
in those days, he met with the average success of a 
beginner, but did not regret being soon drawn into 
politics; and though he kept his office open until he 
entered Congress, it grew more and more to be fre- 
quented by place-hunters than by clients. For a part of 
the time, moreover, his attention was distracted from 
other pursuits by an attachment which resulted in his 
marriage, March 12, 1832, to Eliza, only child of 
Francis Blanchard of Boston by his wife Mary Anne 
Cabot, mother by a former marriage of the late John 
Clarke Lee of Salem. Mrs. Winthrop, a young woman 
of marked personal attractions and great vivacity, hav- 
ing lost both her parents in early childhood, had been 
brought up in the family of her great-uncle and guar- 
dian, Samuel Pickering Gardner, a former member of 
this Society and one of the best of men, to whose widow 
(Rebecca Russell Lowell) many of Mr. Winthrop's enter- 
taining descriptions of Congressional life were subse- 
quently addressed. The happy pair devoted much of 



y 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 11 

their honeymoon to a trip to Maryland and Virginia, 
where they were received with true Southern hospi- 
tality, among the houses at which they were successively 
the guests for one or more days having been those of 
two exceptionally distinguished statesmen, James Madi- 
son and James Barbour, both great talkers and full of 
the most interesting reminiscences. " You see us," said ~ 
the ex-President to Mr. Winthrop, "surrounded by 
negroes. They are eating us out of house and home, 
and gladly would I emancipate them, but I cannot 
make up my mind to what would be a cruelty. They 
are utterly helpless but for us, and they are as much 
attached to the homestead as we are. I cannot drive 
them from our doors unprovided for, and there seems 
no practicable mode of securing them from want in a 
state of freedom." Pursuing the topic, he added, "I 
am beginning to hope, however, that slavery will in 
some way come to an end at no very distant day. The 
debates in our State Convention of 1830 were full of 
encouragement, exhibiting a revolution in opinion on 
this subject hardly second in importance to anything 
which had occurred since the Revolution of 1776. 
These debates gave me the first confident hope that 
domestic slavery in this country would not be eternal." 
In Washington Mr. and Mrs. Winthrop came into con- 
tact with the actual President, Andrew Jackson, a very 
different type of ruler, and in Baltimore they had a 
touching interview with Charles Carroll, last survivor of 
the signers of the Declaration of Independence, then 
ninety-five years old. 

The accident of Henry Clay's decision to visit Boston 
in the autumn of 1833 first drew marked attention to 



-v 



12 A MEMOIR OF 

Mr. Winthrop's gifts as a public speaker. Clay had 
been an unsuccessful candidate for the Presidency in 
the preceding year; but neither this defeat, nor his 
more recent differences with Webster on the subject of 
the Tariff, had cooled the ardor of his Boston follow- 
ers, the younger portion of whom arranged a special 
demonstration in Ins honor. Mr. Winthrop was made 
chairman of a committee to escort him to his hotel, 
where he made him an address of welcome and, before 
his departure, presided at a banquet at which the guest 
of the evening was presented with a pair of silver 
pitchers. The felicity of Mr. Winthrop's utterances on 
these two occasions was so much commented on that, a 
few weeks later, he was invited to make the principal 
address at Faneuil Hall at a caucus of the anti-Jackson 
or National Republican party (soon to adopt the famous 
name of Whigs) prior to the State election for Gov- 
ernor. Our former associate, Hon. William Sullivan, 
author of the " Political Class-Book " and " Letters on 
Public Characters," was among his audience and wrote 
a friend as follows : — 

" I rejoice we have a young orator to keep up the holy flame 
of old Faneuil Hall. I may be allowed, without the charge 
of vanity, to consider myself a judge of such performances, 
and I consider this not merely a good speech for a first effort, 
but one which any practised man might have been proud to 
make. It was pertinent to the occasion ; it was gentlemanly 
and decorous in language ; it was well digested and regular 
in order; singularly free from embarrassment and highly 
pleasing in manner." 1 

1 It was never printed in full, but may be described as having 
coupled an effective arraignment of Jackson's policy with an earnest 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 13 

Soon after appointed to the staff of the Governor 
elect, John Davis, with the rank of lieutenant-colonel, 
he also became a member of the State Central Committee 
of his party, — a post with which he was long identified. 
Both as junior member and subsequently chairman of 
this influential body, his colleagues placed so much 
reliance upon his pen that for a number of years the 
Addresses to Electors and the Resolutions for Conven- 
tions were written wholly or in part by him. Now to 
be found only in the form of rare pamphlets, or in 
bound volumes of newspapers, they are well worth 
the careful perusal of any student of Massachusetts 
history. 1 Having in the spring of 1834 been placed at 
the head of a committee of the young men of Boston to 
memorialize Congress on the subject of the removal of 
the government deposits from the Bank of the United 
States, Mr. Winthrop made a vigorous speech in Faneuil 
Hall in opposition to the Administration, following it 
up by others in different places during the ensuing 
twelve months. In the spring of 1835, the Whig mem- 
bers of the Legislature having nominated Daniel Webster 
for the Presidency, he actively supported that nomina- 
tion by an effective speech at Faneuil Hall at the outset, 
by similar speeches there and elsewhere during the Presi- 
dential campaign of 1836, and by the preparation of a 
variety of printed circulars and resolutions on the same 



appeal to the conservative young men of Massachusetts to give more 
active attention to their political interests and their political duties. 

1 It was the custom to submit them to the approval of the party- 
leaders, and on some of Mr. Winthrop's private copies I find such 
pencilled memoranda as, " Webster wrote opening paragraphs, next 
mine," and "Webster and Everett both had a finger in this pie, but 
were not thought to have much improved its flavor." 



T 






14 A MEMOIR OF 

subject, including the greater part of an Address to 
the People of the United States, written for a public 
meeting in New York at the request of Hiram 
Ketchum. These campaign speeches of Mr. Winthrop, 
with many others delivered by him between the last- 
named year and 1840, — some uttered in different 
parts of New England, some in New York, — while 
they were rapturously greeted by his audiences and 
much lauded by newspapers of his own way of think- 
ing, were very imperfectly reported. As most of them 
now exist, if they exist at all, only in manuscript, I 
quote a few passages from those just mentioned in 
order to give some idea of what might be termed his 
" early manner." 

What, sir, has been the course of the President ? I will 
not trouble this meeting with a detailed statement of it, but 
what one power that he fairly has, has he not abused, and 
what one that he has not, has he not usurped or grasped at ? 
Look at the veto power, — that awful attribute of kings, but 
which hardly any king has dared to wield almost within the 
memory of man, — it is matter of record that it has directly 
or indirectly been employed by our present Chief Magistrate 
a greater number of times than in all the other years since 
the creation of the Constitution. Take, too, the power of re- 
moval from office, — a merely constructive power at the best, 
thrown into the Executive hand by the mere casting vote of 
a Vice-President in the early days of our government, — it is 
ascertained with indisputable accuracy that it has been used 
by our present Chief Magistrate to the full of three times as 
often as by all his predecessors put together. And then, 
sir, his course as to the Bank. . . . There are some deposits 
more sacred than the public funds, deposits which money 
cannot pay for, which gold cannot redeem, — certainly not 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 15 

that gold which has been shorn of the badge of our liberty 
and the motto of our Union. Liberty and the Constitution 
which secures it, what are these but sacred, precious deposits, 
intrusted to our keeping by our fathers for our enjoyment 
and that of our posterity, and who that has an eye to the 
condition of his country can fail to see the vulture hand of 
Andrew Jackson hanging over and clutching at these deposits? 
His whole career has clearly manifested the tyrannous design 
to set up his arbitrary and despotic will as the sole standard 
of government and to make himself the master instead of the 
servant of the American people. With the sanction of the 
party by whom he is supported, the Constitution has been 
violated, the laws have been trampled on, the public treasure 
has been seized, the judiciary has been menaced, the people's 
interests have been overlooked, the people's rights have been 
overleaped, the people's money has been squandered, and the 
people's will has been defied ; while in the intimation that he 
is to be supported for a third term unless some supple tool of 
his own dictation can be made certain of success, we find a 
new manifestation of that utter disregard which he has all 
along evinced for the precepts and practice of our immortal 
Washington, and of all the other great and good men who 
have presided over the Republic. But one single act of his 
whole administration have the people of Massachusetts found 
it in their consciences to approve. But one ray of pure and 
patriotic light has gleamed to illumine and render visible the 
blackness of darkness in which all the rest has been envel- 
oped. And even this, while we are pronouncing it an ema- 
nation of patriotism, flames and flickers so fitfully that we are 
almost constrained to regard it rather as the baser issue of sel- 
fish passion. Who doubts that but for the fortunate personal 
collision between Mr. Calhoun and the President, Nullifica- 
tion in South Carolina would have met the same encourage- 
ment and countenance it had before met in Georgia, and 
would have been, so far as the President could make it, the 
settled construction of the Constitution ? . . . 



16 A MEMOIR OF 

The country is before long to decide whether he alone shall 
descend from his proud elevation while the sordid slaves of 
his will, the slimy spawn of his creation, still cling to and de- 
file it ; or whether it shall be wholly and at once purified and 
become again the source of a rightful, wholesome authority, 
instead of the sink of a corrupt and arbitrary misrule. Shall 
the long-expected hour display to us the mere shifting of 
masters, or shall it bring about the substitution of a good old- 
fashioned President for an obstinate and despotic Chief? 1 
Shall the Capitol in that day be likened only to the house in 
that sacred parable from which indeed one unclean spirit was 
cast out, but into which seven others worse than himself 
otherwise entered, or shall the whole legion be at once ex- 
pelled and extirpated ? Shall that change be a mere change 
from one degree of corruption to another, or shall this corrup- 
tion put on incorruption and our liberties be again restored to 
a sound, healthy constitutional basis ? . . . 

No one who prizes the great principles for which we are 
contending can be ignorant who has been their most able and 
effective assertor. No one who values the safety of the Con- 
stitution or has trembled at the perils by which it has been 
environed, can have failed to recognize its most successful 
and powerful champion. No one who has marked with dis- 
gust and indignation the frequent violations of liberty and 
law which have been attempted by the present administration, 
can have been deaf to the voice of thunder which has rebuked, 
confronted, and driven them back. It is not as the most dis- 
tinguished son of Massachusetts, it is not merely as a great 
man — the world over, a great man — that he has been se- 
lected as our candidate. We are not called upon as the 
Webster party, bent upon the elevation of an individual 
person, nor as a Northern party, seeking the gratification of a 
sectional prejudice. But we are called upon in the simple 
faith of the Constitution, in the unmingled love of our Re- 
publican Union, to select and support for its highest post him 
1 Jackson's admirers liked to call him " the old chief." 



ROBERT C. WTNTHROP. 17 

whom we believe most able to bear up its destinies and most 
faithful to discharge its duties. We are told, over and over 
again told, that liis name awakens little enthusiasm outside 
of New England, that we cannot elect him, and that we are 
throwing away our votes. I should be the last person to 
assert that to his other elements of greatness Mr. Webster 
unites that fascinating address, that wonderful personal mag- 
netism, which have made another of our leaders an idol of the 
masses throughout the country. But, sir, Henry Clay is not 
now in question, and if Webster cannot be elected no Whig 
can be. An appeal, then, to abandon our candidate is an 
appeal to abandon our cause, and to let slip a most fitting 
opportunity of placing on record our profound conviction that 
the highest honors of the Constitution should be awarded to 
its ablest defender. A vote thrown for a bad man, a vote 
thrown for a bad measure, a vote thrown for a false principle, 
however it may be found on the side of a majority, is a vote 
thrown away, — away from the purpose for which it was 
intrusted, away from duty, away from liberty. But a vote 
thrown in support of Constitutional principles and in favor 
of one who has devoted his whole life and his unequalled 
abilities to their defence, though it may fail of its effect and 
fall dead in the ballot-box, is still nobly, gloriously thrown, — 
thrown in strict accordance with the first principles of the 
elective franchise and in the direct line of political and moral 
duty. . . . 

I am not afraid to look defeat in the face, for there is, it 
cannot be denied, a gleam of sunshine on the horizon. The 
gorgon head of Andrew Jackson is no longer in the field 
against us. The smoke of that New Orleans victory will no 
longer blear and blind the eyes of the American people. The 
magic of that word Hero will no longer silence the tones of 
patriotic opposition. The spell is already broken, the charm 
dissolves apace, the bonds of that fatal destiny are scattered, 
the people are awaking. . . . 

Tell me not there is hope that the Baltimore candidate, 

2 



18 A MEMOIR OF 

when once installed in the White House, when he has reached 
the topmost round of his young ambition, will scorn the base 
degrees by which he did ascend and redeem himself from the 
dominion of the infamous cabal by which he has been boosted. 
Such a hope might have been stated with some degree of 
plausibility while he stood wrapped in the dark cloak of that 
cherished non-committal policy which was so long his only 
wear. It was easy then to predicate anything of him which 
suited his purpose or ours, and difficult to prove anything 
against him but political intrigue and cunning. But the fox 
has at last been beaten from his hole, — we have seen his 
teeth, — and we have seen that, like Samson's foxes, he has a 
firebrand at his tail which threatens to burn every green thing 
which is left in the garden of our Liberty. He has been com- 
pelled to give in evidence even to the very teeth and fore- 
head of his faults. His opinions, his intentions if elected, 
are now on record, and he stands pledged by his own sig- 
nature not to recede from the arrogant pretensions, not to 
renounce the despotic doctrines, of his predecessor, — not to 
relax the latter's iron grasp nor cease from perverting all the 
power and patronage of office to personal and political aggran- 
dizement, — but to follow in his footsteps and perpetuate his 
policy ! Why, sir, of what stuff must that man's conscience 
be made, of what consistency must be his principles, of what 
chameleon color, of what Protean shape, of what serpentine 
stability his mental and moral system, who can call Daniel 
Webster his first choice for President and Martin Van Buren 
his second? Not until the whole catalogue of political cut- 
purses has been exhausted, not at least until the chair of 
State stands empty and the Constitution must fail unless he 
fill it, should Van Buren be anything but the last choice of 
any honest Whig. It is idle to talk of his being a Northern 
man, who will befriend Northern interests and Northern 
policy. As I turned over my psalm-book this morning I 
met with two lines which I adopt as my motto upon this 
point : — 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 19 

'No policy shall recommend 
His country's foe to be my friend.' 

Not till the conviction that Martin Van Buren, pledged as 
he is to perpetuate the system of the present Administration, 
is a foe, not to the South or North, or East or West only, but 
to the whole country and its Constitution, is eradicated from 
the very fibres of my heart, could I assent to his receiving 
one Whig vote. If we join with anybody, let it be with our 
friends and not our enemies. And while we shall not part 
with our own candidate nor admit an equal claim to our sup- 
port in another, we may go with him and he will go with us 
to the rescue of the Constitution at any personal sacrifice. 
We hail therefore the triumph of our Western friends with 
unfeigned pleasure and desire no better auspices under which 
to go into our own contest. 1 

In the State election of 1834 Mr. Winthrop had been 
elected a representative from Boston to the General 
Court, where he served six years, the last three of them 
as Speaker. The Massachusetts House of Representa- 
tives was then a body of more than five hundred mem- 
bers, over whom it was no light task to preside, but 
Mr. Winthrop had a natural aptitude for duties the 
successful discharge of which added largely to his repu- 
tation, and he made an exhaustive study of parliament- 
ary law, which stood him in good stead when called 
upon at a later day to perform similar functions in a 
national arena. During this period of legislative service 
in his own Commonwealth his first important speech 
was in favor of compensation for the destruction of the 

1 In 1836 there were four candidates for the Presidency : Martin Van 
Buren of New York, William Henry Harrison of Ohio, Hugh L. White 
of Tennessee, and Daniel Webster of Massachusetts. The allusion in 
the above paragraph is to the supporters of General Harrison. 



20 A MEMOIR OF 

Ursuline Convent by a mob. It was succeeded at inter- 
vals by elaborate speeches entitled, The Testimony of 
Infidels, Protection to Domestic Industry, The Sub- 
Treasury System, and The Votes of Interested Mem- 
bers ; but they need not be further described here, as 
they are to be found in the first volume of his collected 
works. A lecture by him in Boston, in 1838, on Free 
Schools and Free Governments, was the first of a long 
series of non-political productions, prepared by him at 
intervals between that time and his old age, which soon 
made him a peculiar favorite on commemorative occa- 
sions. It was followed by an address on the Pilgrim 
Fathers, delivered before the New England Society of 
New York, in 1839, and which is interesting to compare 
with his celebrated oration at Plymouth, in 1870, on 
the Two Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary of the 
Landing of the Pilgrims. Until his election as Speaker 
he continued his connection with the militia, successive- 
ly serving on the staff of Governors Davis, Armstrong, 
and Everett, the duties incident to which position, 
necessitating attendance at public gatherings in all 
parts of the State, enabled him to make pleasant ac- 
quaintances and to acquire an exceptional knack at 
impromptu after-dinner speaking. His diaries during 
this early period of his life were very irregularly kept, 
often not kept at all. The one for 1836 is fuller than 
the others, and in it, besides chronicling the death of 
President Madison, the admission of Arkansas and 
Michigan to the Union, some noteworthy remarks of 
Mr. Webster on the subject of Agriculture, and the re- 
markable fact that the sun was not visible in Boston 
from the 21st of May to the 25th of June, he also 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 21 

describes at greater or less length Bunker Hill and 
Fourth of July celebrations, the Two Hundredth anni- 
versaries of Harvard College and the town of Dedham, 
and great reviews of troops at Greenfield and elsewhere. 
One entry I copy : — 

July 28. Dined at my father's in company with J. Q. Adams, 
Chief Justice Shaw, and others. President Adams did all the 
talking and was, as usual, very interesting. He said that he 
despaired of the Union. He believed that the population of 
the United States was destined soon to overrun not only 
Texas, but Mexico, and that the inevitable result would be 
two or more confederacies. The soil of Mexico was invitiner, 
the climate alluring, and he believed the country would fall 
an easy prey to our hardy adventurers. He prophesied that 
a century hence would find the whole North American con- 
tinent, from Labrador to Panama, and from the Atlantic to 
the Pacific, controlled by the Anglo-Saxon race, which would 
then number one hundred millions. He thought the Cana- 
dians were rapidly nearing a separation from British rule, 
though it might be difficult to unite them with us. 

In those days Democrats were familiarly styled by 
their opponents " Locofocos," — a long-extinct epithet 
habitually contracted into "Loco." The Loco leader 
against whom Mr. "Wmthrop was most often pitted in 
debates in the Legislature was Robert Eantoul, Jr., an 
able man who eventually succeeded him in the United 
States Senate. His political friends in Massachusetts 
were then so numerous that I name only those of whom 
he saw most, two of them much older than himself, and 
all three members of this Society. They were Leverett 
Saltonstall, of Salem, who afterward served with him 
in Congress ; the great orator, Edward Everett, then 



22 A MEMOIR OF 

Governor, of whom Mr. Winthrop was long the confi- 
dential aide-de-camp; and John H. Clifford of New 
Bedford, afterward Governor of the Commonwealth, 
with whom Mr. Winthrop maintained a familiar corre- 
spondence for forty years. His tribute to Everett and 
his memoir of Clifford are to be found both in our own 
Proceedings and in his published volumes. Of Salton- 
stall he wrote in a commonplace book, after the latter' s 
death in 1845 : — 

He had as large a heart as ever beat in human bosom, an 
earnest faith in things higher than human. His ambition 
was chastened and regulated. He would have followed prin- 
ciples to the death, but not men. He had a ready, natural, 
charming eloquence, pouring out clear and wise and honest 
counsels in a captivating strain. He studied enough to 
know what he was talking about, and was a well-read lawyer 
and scholar, but no delver. I shall always honor his memory 
as that of a genial, generous, whole-souled Christian gentle- 
man, and one of the warmest of friends. 

Under the old arrangement of electoral districts the 
county of Suffolk returned a single representative to 
Congress, known as the " Member for Boston." In 
1834 Abbott Lawrence was appropriately elected to 
this post, but the cares of his large business interests 
obliged him to resign in 1836, when some admirers of 
Mr. Winthrop's rhetoric began to press him for the 
succession, though he withdrew his name as soon as 
the movement came to his knowledge, considering it 
ill-advised and premature. Upon the resignation of 
Richard Fletcher in 1839, however, the same movement 
became much more general, when Mr. Webster sent for 
Mr. Winthrop and said : " I suppose you know you are 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 23 

again talked of for Congress, and this time I have no 
doubt you can have the seat if you really wish it. But 
I have reason to think our friend Lawrence has now 
more leisure, and is not indisposed for another term. 
His good-will is important to the party, and as you are 
so young a man and certain to go later, perhaps you 
will not mind continuing in the Legislature for the 
present." Upon Mr. Winthrop's expressing his assent 
to this arrangement, Mr. Webster continued, in a strain 
that Mr. Winthrop long afterward regarded as pro- 
phetic : " I have had less hesitation in making this 
suggestion to you as I am by no means sure you will 
like Washington overmuch when you get there. You 
have gone fast in Massachusetts politics, and you may 
go far in National ones. You are thoroughly equipped 
for public affairs. You have in addition the advantages 
of not having to work for your living, and of an 
acquired readiness in debate, which is a precious thing 
in the hour of need. But, with all this, I question 
whether to a man of your scholarly instincts and fastidi- 
ous tastes, the atmosphere of self-seeking and misrep- 
resentation which is so apt to surround a public man 
of the first rank at the Capital, will not prove grievous 
and disheartening, — whether you will not one day 
weary of it all, and wish yourself back in your study 
at home." 

Some six months later, in the spring of 1840, Mr. 
Webster sent for him to confer privately with regard 
to the approaching Whig nomination for the Presidency. 
After admitting that neither Mr. Clay nor himself had 
any chance of it, he deprecated the prevailing move- 
ment in favor of General Harrison, expressing a decided 



24 A MEMOIR OF 

preference for General Scott, whom he described as a 
Virginian by birth, with a strong following in the 
Middle States, a military career sufficiently adventurous 
to tickle the masses, a good fellow in every way, and 
a man not merely of patriotic instincts but of robust 
frame, whereas Harrison was then physically some- 
what broken. Mr. Winthrop expressed entire willing- 
ness to join in trying to effect Scott's nomination, but 
pointed out that such a movement would be much 
strengthened if it were understood that Mr. Webster 
would consent to waive precedence and take the nomi- 
nation for Vice-President. Webster did not altogether 
reject this idea, and efforts were made in various quar- 
ters to promote a " Scott and Webster " ticket ; but 
popular feeling was strongly for Harrison, who was 
nominated and elected on a wave of enthusiasm rarely, 
if ever, equalled in this country. Meantime the health 
of Abbott Lawrence had obliged him to resign his seat, 
and Mr. Winthrop, who had taken an active part in the 
campaign, was returned Member for Boston at the same 
general election, — returned not merely for the unex- 
pired term, but for the new Congress to begin in March, 
and by a larger vote than that accorded to any of his 
predecessors. About a fortnight before the polling the 
following letters were interchanged by him and a 
leading Abolitionist with whom he was not personally 
acquainted. 

Boston, Oct. 27, 1840. 
R. C. Winthrop, Esq. : 

Sir, — As you are a candidate to represent this district in 
Congress, permit me as an elector, and on behalf of others as 
well as myself, to know your sentiments on the subject of 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 25 

slavery, so far as they may relate to the duties of a member of 
Congress. For that purpose I would respectfully inquire, 

First, whether you concur in opinion with the Resolves 
relating to slavery and the slave-trade, and the admission of 
new States into the Union, passed at the last session of the 
Legislature of this Commonwealth ? 

Secondly, are you in favor of abolishing all constitutional 
provisions which require the citizens of Free States to aid in 
supporting and perpetuating slavery ? 

I wish it to be understood that these inquiries are for your 
present views and opinions, and not for the purpose of asking 
a pledge for any particular course of action in relation thereto 
as a member of Congress, should you be elected. 

Respectfully, 

Edmund Jackson. 



Boston, Nov. 2, 1840. 
Edmund Jackson, Esq.: 

Sir, — In a communication received by me a few days 
since on my return from the country, you call on me, in 
behalf of others as well as yourself, to express my sentiments 
on the subject of slavery so far as they relate to the duties 
of a member of Congress, and to that end you propound to 
me two inquiries. 

In reply to the first of those inquiries, I beg to state that 
while I believe that Congress has no authority to interfere 
with the domestic institutions of the Southern States, yet I 
have never seen any reason to doubt that it possesses all the 
powers contemplated in the Resolutions to which you refer 
me. I have no hesitation in adding that my vote could never 
be withheld, if I had a vote to give in Congress or elsewhere, 
whenever I should see a just, practicable, and Constitutional 
mode of diminishing or mitigating so great an evil as slavery. 
It is clear, however, that were I, as a candidate for Congress, 
to express my concurrence in the Resolutions in question, 



26 A MEMOIR OF 

it would be equivalent to a pledge that I would, if elected, 
exert myself individually and immediately to bring about the 
measures which they propose. Such a pledge you do not 
seem to ask. At all events, it is one which I should be 
entirely unwilling to give. On the contrary, I might lead 
you into error were I not explicitly to state that, should I be 
returned to Congress at the approaching election, I should 
not conceive it as among the special duties imposed upon me 
by my constituents to agitate the subject of slavery in any 
form. 

Your second inquiry involves considerations which have 
never before been presented to my mind. After such brief 
reflection as I have been able to bestow upon it, I feel bound 
no less distinctly to declare that I cannot regard it as desir- 
able or expedient to attempt any alterations of the Constitu- 
tion in relation to slavery. Certainly the best hope for the 
Country which I venture to entertain at present is that the 
National Compact may be preserved as it is, and may be once 
more restored to its true interpretation and its rightful su- 
premacy. To these ends any humble efforts of which I am 
capable would be directed should the electors of this Congres- 
sional district honor me with a majority of their suffrages. 
I am, Sir, very respectfully, 

Your ob* servant, 

Robert C. Winthkop. 



II. 



The winter journey of a New England Congressman 
to Washington in those days often involved much 
fatigue and exposure. Mr. Winthrop left Boston at the 
beginning of December, and after a short stay in New 
York, reached Philadelphia without hindrance. His 




JET. 32. 



ROBERT C. WIXTHROP. 27 

subsequent adventures are best described in his own 
words : — 

Left Phil* at 3, on Friday aft. with Gov. Levi Lincoln 
for companion. Snow was then falling, and before dark we 
were involved in a heavy storm. Between 9 and 10 p. iff. 
(near Elkton) the engine-wheels refused to revolve any 
longer, and we found ourselves several miles from a village, 
without food or fuel, the fires soon going out in the stoves. 
There was no chance of lying down, as the cars were crowded, 
so there Lincoln and I sat shoulder to shoulder the livelong 
night, surrounded by a lot of noisy fellows, who made our 
plight additionally hideous by their profane and vulgar mer- 
riment. The next morning we had to foot it in the snow 
more than two miles along the track to a vile tavern, where 
we got a miserable breakfast. Here we waited five hours for 
the track to be cleared, finally reaching Baltimore at 9 on 
Saturday evening, half starved with cold and hunger, having 
had no meal since breakfast. Sunday the storm raged even 
more furiously, and I was not indisposed to remain quiet ; 
but about 10 A. if. Lincoln came to me and said, ' Colonel, I 
don't like travelling on Sunday, but we are the servants of 
the Government, and there may be no quorum in the House 
to-morrow unless we start to-day. There is no religion in 
spending the Sabbath in a hotel like this, and the porter tells 
me a mail-train leaves in half an hour, with a good chance of 
reaching Washington before dinner.' "We left accordingly, 
but had hardly proceeded five miles before our snow-plough 
broke down, and could not be moved, thereby obliging us to 
return to Baltimore, and try the Frederick track as far as 
Relay House, which we did not reach till 7 p. iff., and where 
we got the first mouthful since morning. "We got away from 
Relay soon after 8, but found the snow-drifts deeper than 
ever. We were continually obliged to put back some dis- 
tance to gather fresh impetus, and it was not till nearly day- 
break on Monday morning that I caught sight of the columns 



28 A MEMOIR OF 

of the Capitol, gilded by as sweet a moonlight as ever rested 
on a Roman ruin. Lincoln and I trudged on foot to Gads- 
by's, and, after a bath and a hearty breakfast, were in our 
seats at the opening of the House. 



Social life in Washington was then a very unpretend- 
ing affair. It was a rare thing for a member of either 
branch of Congress to own or rent a house. The pay 
was only eight dollars a day during the session, with an 
allowance for travelling expenses, and a few insignificant 
perquisites, such as newspapers, letter-paper, pens, ink, 
sealing-wax, blotting-books, and a pen-knife. Private 
rooms in the Capitol, private secretaries in the guise of 
clerks of committees, were unknown ; while even a 
tithe of the long list of personal expenses and luxuries 
now charged to the contingent funds would have ex- 
cited popular indignation. Members lived mostly in 
large private boarding-houses, the occupants of which 
were mutually agreed on in advance, — an arrangement 
which often brought into close association men from 
different sections of the Union, besides facilitating the 
frequent exercise of inexpensive hospitality. These 
boarding-houses were called " Messes," and the one to 
which Mr. Winthrop first belonged consisted, in addition 
to his wife and children who soon joined him, of his 
friend Saltonstall with his family, of Senator Richard 
Bayard of Delaware with his family, and of Senator 
Henderson of Mississippi with his family. The follow- 
ing winter he was in . a smaller Mess, consisting of his 
own family and that of John Pendleton Kennedy, then 
member for Baltimore, afterward Secretary of the Navy 
and President of the Maryland Historical Society, the 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 29 

most genial of companions and most entertaining of 
correspondents, perhaps the closest of all Mr. Win- 
throp's friends, and to whose memory, it may not be for- 
gotten, he once paid a warm tribute in our Proceedings. 
A later and a famous Mess, to which he belonged for 
years, was Mrs. Whitwell's on Capitol Hill, where his 
associates, for longer or shorter periods, were his 
colleagues, Joseph Grinnell and George Ashmun, Sena- 
tors Bates and Davis of Massachusetts, Senators Dayton 
and Miller of New Jersey, Senators Berrien of Georgia 
and Badger of North Carolina, with George Evans, 
successively Representative and Senator from Maine, 
one of the most eloquent men of his day, now almost 
forgotten. Of Mess dinners there was a continual 
interchange. Not confined to one particular party, 
they were as a rule very informal, though now and 
then a special effort was made in honor of the minister 
of some great power, some distinguished foreigner, or 
some pre-eminent statesman like John Quincy Adams, 
Clay, or Webster. Perhaps the most notable of these 
dinners at which Mr. Winthrop assisted during his first 
session was. a friendly contest between North and South 
as to which could place on table the best old wine. 
Samuel L. Southard, Ogden Hoffman, and Moses 
Grinnell were hosts on this occasion, while the cham- 
pion bottle-holder of the South was Isaac E. Holmes 
of Charleston. Fourteen famous varieties of Madeira 
(seven from each section) were produced and sampled, 
but the upshot was a unanimous and discreet decision 
to have another trial. Another noteworthy dinner — 
though in the ensuing extra-session, and not exactly a 
Mess dinner — was at Mr. Webster's at the time when 



30 A MEMOIR OF 

Tyler's tergiversation had so disgusted the Whig party, 
and when his cabinet had all resigned except Mr. Web- 
ster, who hesitated to relinquish the State Department 
before he could settle the Northeastern boundary ques- 
tion. The dinner was at what would now be consid- 
ered the unearthly hour of four in the afternoon, and 
on his way to the dining-room Mr. Winthrop observed 
a one-horse carryall at the door, from which, to his 
great astonishment, emerged alone and unattended the 
small, spare form of President Tyler, who ascended the 
steps with an air of mingled perturbation and dejection. 
Upon Mr. Webster's attention being called to this cir- 
cumstance he at once left the table, and, after an 
absence of nearly half an hour, was observed to conduct 
the President to his vehicle, and to administer to him 
what seemed to the guests at the window to be a con- 
soling pat on the back. Mr. Winthrop always believed 
(though he did not know the fact) that Tyler had got 
wind of a supposed intention to resign on the part of 
the Secretary of State, that he had come on the spur of 
the moment to implore him to stand by him, and had 
received the assurance that no hostile step would then 
be taken. It need hardly be said that Mr. Webster's 
course in this matter excited marked differences of 
opinion among the Whigs. Among those who were 
represented as having urged him to resign were Mr. 
Winthrop and Mr. Saltonstall. This, however, was not 
the case. Their advice to him was to do whatever, in 
his judgment, would be for the best interests of the 
country; but they deprecated any reflection on his 
colleagues. 

Mr. Winthrop made no formal speech in Congress 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 31 

during his first winter, preferring not to seem to push 
himself forward. Moreover, though he enjoyed Wash- 
ington society, he found that the climate disagreed with 
him and was ill for several weeks with a sort of accli- 
mating fever. A little later he was called home by the 
sudden death of his aged father, whose last message of 
love to his absent son was the assurance that he had 
never once given him a moment's uneasiness. His first 
effort was made in the ensuing extra session, July 2, 
1841, in the debate on the Distribution of the Public 
Lands, — followed, on the 28th of the same month, by 
a speech on the National Revenue, which is alluded to 
in the published diary of John Quincy Adams as "a 
very able argument." In the autumn he was active, as 
usual, in the State canvass. Even in Massachusetts 
Tyler's defection had greatly damaged the Whig party, 
concerning which, in his diary for November 5, Mr. 
Adams wrote : " It is splitting into a thousand frag- 
ments. Abbott Lawrence is struggling to sustain it, 
and Rufus Choate and Robert C. Winthrop and Leve- 
rett Saltonstall are haranguing Whig caucus meetings 
throughout the State, in vain, to support it. The gen- 
eral expectation is that Democracy will ride rough-shod 
over the whole country. The ambitious politicians are 
trimming their sails to the breeze. . . . Caleb dishing 
has taken a lover's leap over to the Tyler territory and 
makes his court to the Lady Elizabeth." Not long after 
the re-assembling of Congress Mr. Winthrop delivered 
(Dec. 30, 1841) an elaborate speech on the Policy of 
Discriminating Duties, in allusion to which Mr. Adams 
wrote, "Mr. Winthrop's promise as an orator and de- 
bater in the House is of the highest order." 



i 



32 A MEMOIR OF 

> 

The next few months slowly developed a dark cloud 

on his domestic horizon. Mrs. Winthrop, who had been 
in excellent health during the first nine years of her 
married life, had latterly exhibited a delicacy of the 
lungs which created no alarm at the time, but which 
in the course of the winter enfeebled her to such an ex- 
tent that she was removed in the spring from Washing- 
ton to Boston, where she died, at the age of thirty-three, 
June 14, 1842, to the grief of all who knew her. In 
order to enable her husband to be with her in her last 
illness and at the same time not to lose a Whig vote in 
the House upon the important questions then pending, 
an arrangement was made by which Mr. Winthrop 
resigned his seat, which was filled by his friend Nathan 
Appleton, one of its former occupants, who retired in 
the following autumn, when Mr. Winthrop was again 
returned. 

On the 20th of January, 1843, he read to the House 
an exhaustive Report — the most important ever made 
on that subject — on the Imprisonment of Free Colored 
Seamen in Southern ports, and five days later he made 
a speech on the Safe-keeping of the Public Moneys, 
contending that the Exchequer Bill then before the 
House ought not to be adopted, and taking occasion to 
reply to some recent attacks upon Mr. Webster, though 
he frankly confessed that he was not in accord with 
much that had fallen from the latter in his well-known 
speech at Faneuil Hall some months before. 1 In chroni- 

1 A speech described by J. Q. Adams, always severe upon Webster, 
as " bitter as wormwood to nearly the whole of the Whig party and 
sweeter than honey to the radical Democracy ; boastful, cunning, Jesuiti- 
cal, fawning, and insolent; ambiguous in its givings out, avowing his 
determination not to let them know whether he intends to resign his 



ROBERT C. TTINTHROP. 33 

cling this Exchequer debate Mr. Adams says, "Three 
one-hour speeches were successively delivered by D. D. 
Barnard, R. C. Winthrop, and T. F. Marshall, all of the 
highest order of eloquence, though with irreconcilable 
dissent of opinions." This was a great compliment to 
the two first-named gentlemen, as Tom Marshall of 
Kentucky (as he was generally styled) had a great repu- 
tation for oratory. On the 12th of the following Octo- 
ber, Mr. Winthrop made an elaborate speech in Faneuil 
Hall, which he entitled The Credit of Massachusetts 
Vindicated, and soon after the reassembling of Congress 
he had, on the 19th of December, a passage of arms 
with Henry A. Wise of Virginia on the subject of the 
President's Message. 

In January, 1844, he addressed the House at length 
on the Right of Petition. His speech on this occasion 
has been often characterized as the leading authority 
on the parliamentary law of the question, and it was 
described by Mr. Adams on the day of its delivery 
as " an excellent one, but repeatedly interrupted by the 

addle-headed blunders of about a precedent from 

Hatsell in 1665." His peroration was as follows : — 

Mr. Speaker, we ask for these petitions only that you 
will treat them as you treat other petitions. We set up 
for them no absurd or extravagant pretensions. We claim 
for them no exclusive or engrossing attention. We desire 
only that you will adopt no prescriptive and passionate course 
with regard to them. We demand only that you will allow 
them to go through the same orderly round of reception, 

office or not, arguing all sorts of reasons for his retaining it, but intimat- 
ing that he may perhaps release his grasp upon it ; dealing open blows 
at the late Whig Convention for their resolution of total severance from 
John Tyler, and sly stabs at Clay and me, without naming either of us." 

3 



y 



34 A MEMOIR OF 

reference, and report, with all other petitions. When they 
have gone through that round, they will be just as much 
under your own control as they were before they entered on 
it. I heartily hope, sir, that this course is now about to be 
adopted. I hope it as an advocate of the right of petition. 
I hope it is as a Northern man with Northern principles, if 
you please to term me so. But I hope it not less as an 
American citizen with American principles ; as a friend to 
the Constitution and the Union ; as one who is as little dis- 
posed to interfere with any rights of other States as to sur- 
render any rights of his own State ; as one who, though he 
may see provisions of the Constitution which are odious in 
principle and unjust in practice, — provisions which he would 
gladly have had omitted at the outset, and gladly see altered 
now if such an alteration were practicable, — is yet willing to 
stand by our Constitution as it is, our Union as it is, our Ter- 
ritory as it is ! I honestly believe that the course of this 
House in relation to these petitions has done more than all 
other causes combined to bring the Constitution into disre- 
gard and the Union into danger. Other causes have indeed 
co-operated with this cause. Your arbitrary and oppressive 
State laws for imprisoning our free colored seamen; your 
abhorrent proposal to annex Texas to the Union, in violation 
of the compromises of the Constitution, — yes, sir, of those 
very compromises on which Adams and Hancock met Jef- 
ferson and Madison (to use language recently employed on 
this floor) ; these laws and these proposals have unquestion- 
ably co-operated of late with the denial of the right of peti- 
tion, in exciting in some quarters a spirit of discontent with 
our existing system. But this rule of the House has been 
the original spring of the whole feeling. And to what ad- 
vantage on the part of those by whom it was devised ? Have 
Southern institutions been any safer since its establishment ? 
Have the enemies to those institutions been rendered any less 
ardent or less active by it ? Has agitation on the subject of 
slave ry in this Hall been repressed or allayed by it ? Have 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 35 

these petitions and resolutions been diminished in number 
under its operation and influence ? No, sir, the very reverse, 
the precise opposite of all this, has been the result. The at- 
tempt of this House to suppress and silence all utterance on 
the subject of slavery has terminated as did the attempt of 
one of the kings of ancient Judah to suppress the warnings 
of the prophet of God. The prophet, we are told, took an- 
other roll and wrote on it all the words which the king had 
burned in the fire, and ' there were added besides unto them 
many like words ! ' And this always has been, and always 
will be, the brief history of every effort to silence free in- 
quiry and stifle free discussion. I thank Heaven that it is 
so. It is this inherent and inextinguishable elasticity of 
opinion, of conscience, of inquiry, which, like the great agent 
of modern art, gains only new force, fresh vigor, redoubled 
powers of progress and propulsion, by every degree of com- 
pression and restraint ; it is this to which the world owes all 
the liberty it has yet acquired and to which it will owe all 
that is yet in store for it. Well did John Milton exclaim, iD 
his noble defence of unlicensed printing, ' Give me the lib- 
erty to know, to utter, and to argue freely, above all liberties,' 
— for in securing that, we secure the all-sufficient instrument 
for achieving all other liberties. 

Having been privately warned by Mr. Webster that 
Tyler was bent on signalizing the close of his adminis- 
tration by an attempt to compass the annexation of 
Texas, Mr. Winthrop offered in the House (March 15, 
1844) the following Resolution: — 

Resolved, That no proposition for the annexation of Texas 
to the United States ought to be made or assented to by this 
Government. 

Jacob Thompson of Mississippi objected to its re- 
ception, when Mr. Winthrop moved to suspend the 



36 A MEMOIR OF 

rules, but was defeated by a vote of 122 to 40. Three 
days later he made what might be termed a rattling 
speech on the Oregon Bill, charging the Democratic 
party with being always ready to stir up prejudice 
against England for political purposes — with a habit 
of accusing every one who did not fall in with their 
policy of being under some sort of British influence — 
and with a disposition to make hatred of England a sort 
of standard of American patriotism. From this indict- 
ment, however, he excepted Mr. Calhoun, who had de- 
clared that the " crowning glory " of the recent Treaty 
of Washington was its establishing " permanent amity 
and peace " between the two nations. 1 

On the 16th of May he made a Report from the Com- 
mittee on Commerce on the subject of American Sea- 
men in Foreign Ports, and after the adjournment of 
Congress he was a frequent speaker in that disastrous 
Presidential campaign which ended in the defeat of the 
Whie candidate, to the consternation of his followers. 
" The stars in their courses," wrote Mr. Winthrop, 
" seem to be warring against us. First, Harrison's 
death, then Tyler's treachery, now Clay's defeat. Al- 
though my admiration for the latter had grown less 
ardent than of old, I still considered him the one man 
in the country who, all things considered, best de- 
served the Presidency. And now to have him beaten 
by a Polk ! I dread in the near future foreign wars, 
with a marked increase of sectional irritation." Writ- 
ing on the same subject thirty-six years afterward, he 
said : " The result of the election afforded the first ex- 

1 J. Q. Adams says this speech of Mr. Winthrop's was " off-hand," 
and that it made C. J. Ingersoll "eat his words." 



EOBERT C. WINTHROP. 37 

ample, so often reproduced in later years, of the advan- 
tage enjoyed by a candidate who had said little, done 
little, and made few enemies, over one who has been 
constantly in the public eye, never shrinking from re- 
sponsibility, and never failing to take a decided part in 
every controversy. No more serious discouragement to 
great abilities and great services as qualifications and 
recommendations for high office was ever experienced 
than in the preference given to Polk over Clay in 
1844." He realized, however, that the immediate cause 
of Clay's defeat, the loss of the State of New York, 
was chiefly due to the exertions of the so-called Liberty 
party, who thus became, in his judgment, the indirect 
movers of the annexation of Texas and the Mexican 
"War. 1 

In November, 1844, Mr. Adams records a long con- 
versation with Mr. Winthrop concerning the latter's 
kinsman, George William Erving (between whom and 
himself had long existed a bitter feud which Mr. Win- 
throp was endeavoring to heal), adding, " I assured Mr. 
Winthrop, also, that my son would countenance no de- 
sign or attempt to place him in competition with him, 
and that he would have my best wishes for his continu- 
ance in his present station as long as it would be agree- 
able to him and for his promotion to any other office 
of higher dignity and importance. He expressed much 
gratification at these assurances, but said he had de- 
termined not to serve in Congress after this next elec- 
tion." This last sentence requires explanation, as it is 

1 It may be remembered that J. Q. Adams said in his diary, " The 
electioneering of the Liberty party, from Birney, their head, down, is 
more knavish than that of either of the others." 



38 A MEMOIR OF 

so worded that a reader might suppose that Mr. Win- 
throp had intended to retire from Congress at the close 
of 1844, whereas the intention he expressed was not 
again to become a candidate after the election then in pro- 
gress, which was for a term ending March 4, 1847. His 
reason for this decision (to which, as will be seen, he 
did not adhere) was that he had grown tired of Wash- 
ington. In spite of its social attractions and in spite of 
his oratorical successes, he had felt lonely there since 
his wife's death, and the climate grew more and more 
distasteful to him, having a tendency to make him 
feverish. On the 6th of January, 1845, he made an 
hour's speech against the annexation of Texas, ending 
with the following paragraph : — 

I am against annexation now and always, — because I be- 
lieve it to be clearly unconstitutional in substance ; because I 
believe it will break up the balance of our system, violate the 
Compromises of the Constitution, and endanger the perma- 
nence of our Union ; and, above all, because I am uncom- 
promisingly opposed to the extension of domestic slavery, or 
to the addition of another inch of slaveholding territory to 
this nation. 

On the 2d of February, 1845, he made a second 
speech on the Oregon Bill, which contained the follow- 
ing passages : 1 — 

No more negotiations ! Why, Mr. Chairman, where is 
such a doctrine as this to lead us ? Inevitably to war. To 
war with England now , to war with all the world hereafter, 

1 J. Q. Adams calls it " an excellent speech," and says it was " an- 
swered with brutality by Shepard Cary of Maine, and Andrew Kennedy 
of Indiana." 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 39 

or certainly with all parts of the world with which we may 
have controversies of any sort, and even war can never put 
an end to the necessity of negotiation. Unless war is to be 
perpetual, you must come back to negotiation in the end. 
The only question in the case before us — the only question 
in the case of disputed international rights — is not whether 
you will negotiate or fight, but whether you will negotiate 
only, or negotiate and fight both. Battles will never settle 
boundaries between Great Britain and the United States, in 
Oregon or elsewhere. The capture of ships, the destruction 
of commerce, the burning and plundering of cities, will leave 
us just where we began. First or last, negotiation alone can 
settle this question. For one, then, I am for negotiation first, 
before war and without war.^ I believe that we shall get 
quite as much of Oregon in this way ; and I know that we 
shall get it at less expense, not merely of money, but of all 
that makes up the true honor and welfare of our country. 
Sir, the reckless flippancy with which war is spoken of in this 
House as a thing to be ' let come,' rather than wait for the 
issue of negotiations, is deserving, in my judgment, of the 
severest rebuke and reprobation from any Christian patriot 
and statesman. I say let it not come, let it never come, if any 
degree of honorable patience and forbearance will avert it. I 
protest against any course of proceeding which shall invite or 
facilitate its approach. I protest against it in behalf of the 
Commerce of the nation, so considerable a part of which I 
have the honor to represent. I protest against it in the name 
of Morality and Religion, which ought to be represented by 
every member on this floor. . . . 

I intend no disrespect to any gentleman who hears me; 
but as I have listened to the heroic strains which have re- 
sounded through this hall for some days past, in reference to 
the facility with which we could muster our fleets in the 
Pacific, and march our armies over the Rocky Mountains, 
and whip Great Britain into a willingness to abandon her pre- 
tensions, I have wished that some Philip Faulconbridge 



40 A MEMOIR OF 

were here to reply, as he does in Shakespeare's "King John," 
to some swaggering citizen of Angiers — 

Here 's a large mouth indeed, 

That spits forth death and mountains, rocks and seas ; 

Talks as familiarly of roaring lions, 

As maids of thirteen do of puppy-dogs. 

He speaks plain cannon, fire, and smoke, and bounce ! 

And against whom are all these gasconading bravadoes 
indulged ? What nation has betn thus bethumpt and basti- 
nadoed with brave words ? I have no compliments to bestow 
on Great Britain, and am not here as her apologist or defen- 
der. But this, at least, I can say without fear of imputation 
or impugnment, that of all the nations in the world she is 
that nation which is able to do us the most good in peace and 
the most harm in war. She is that nation with whom the 
best interests of our country imperatively demand of us to 
go along harmoniously so long as we can do so with unques- 
tioned right and honor. She is that nation a belligerent con- 
flict with whom would put back the cause of human civiliza- 
tion and improvement more than it has advanced in a half- 
century past, or would recover in a half-century to come. 
Peace between Great Britain and the United States is not a 
mere interest of the two countries. It is an interest of the 
world, of civilization, of humanity: and a fearful reckoning 
will be theirs who shall wantonly disturb it. . . . 

But then, Great Britain is so insolent and so aggressive 
that we can't help hating her. She is hemming us round on 
every side, the honorable member from Illinois 1 tells us, and 
we must make a stand against her soon, or we shall be abso- 
lutely overrun ! How far, sir, will such a declaration bear 
the light of historical truth ? It would seem to imply that 
the United States of America was the original civilized nation 
established on this continent ; that Great Britain had subse- 
quently made settlements in our neighborhood ; and that she 

1 Stephen A. Douglas. 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 41 

had systematically proceeded to environ us on all sides with 
her colonial possessions and military posts. Tins is certainly 
a new reading of American history. I have somehow or other 
obtained an impression from the schools that Great Britain 
once possessed almost the whole of this continent, or, at any 
rate, a very much larger part than she now enjoys. I have an 
indistinct idea that there was a day when she held dominion 
over almost all the territories in winch we now rejoice. I 
have some dreamy recollection of having read or heard about 
stamp acts, and tea taxes, and Boston port bills ; about Bun- 
ker hills, and Saratogas, and Yorktowns ; about revolutions 
and declarations and treaties of Independence. And it is still 
my belief, Mr. Chairman, which fire will not burn out of me, 
that Great Britain has been deprived, within the last seventy 
years, of her most valuable possessions on this continent, and 
that instead of her hemming us in, we have thrust her out, 
and left her, comparatively speaking, a second-rate power in 
this Western hemisphere. She has not acquired one foot of 
soil upon this continent except in the way of honorable treaty 
with our own government since the day on which we finally 
ousted her from the limits of our Republican Union. Every- 
body knows that she acquired Canada by the treaty of 1763. 
We ourselves helped her to that acquisition. Not a few of 
the forces — not a few of the leaders — by which our own 
independence was achieved were trained up, as by a Provi- 
dential preparation, for the noble duty which awaited them, 
in the war which resulted in the cession of Canada to Great 
Britain. Certainly we have no cause of quarrel with Great 
Britain that Canada is hers. But then, she has dared to think 
about Texas, she has cast some very suspicious glances at Cuba, 
and there is great reason to apprehend that her heart is at this 
moment upon California ! True, she has formally denied to 
our own Government that she has any desire to see Texas 
other than an independent nation. True, she once conquered 
Cuba and gave it back to Spain by the treaty of 1763. True, 
she has given no outward and visible sign of any passionate 



42 A MEMOIR OF 

yearning for the further dismemberment of Mexico. But who 
trusts to diplomatic assurances ? Who confides in innocent 
appearances ? Has not the Chairman of our own Committee 
of Foreign Affairs l warned us that diplomatic assurances, 
like the oaths which formerly accompanied treaties, are the 
cheap contrivances of premeditated hostile action, and that 
the assurance of Great Britain with regard to Texas is but 
' the ordinary harbinger of whatever it most solemnly denies ' ? 
Such a course of argument as this, Mr. Chairman, is certainly 
in one respect conclusive. There is obviously no mode of 
replying to it. Once assume the position that neither the 
words nor the deeds of Great Britain are to be taken in evi- 
dence of her designs, but that her assurances are all hollow 
and her acts all hypocritical, and .there is no measure of 
aggression and outrage which you may not justly apprehend 
from her. But, sir, I boldly put the question to the con- 
sciences of all who hear me, — Of which of the two countries, 
Great Britain or the United States, will impartial history re- 
cord that it manifested a spirit of impatient and insatiate self- 
aggrandizement on this North American continent? How 
does the record stand as already made up ? If Great Britain 
has been thinking of Texas, we have acquired Louisiana ; if 
Great Britain has been looking after Cuba, we have estab- 
lished ourselves in Florida ; if Great Britain has set her heart 
on California, we have put our hand on Texas. Reproach 
Great Britain, if you please, with the policy she has pursued 
in extending her dominions elsewhere. Reprobate, if you 
please, her course of aggression upon the East Indian tribes, 
and do not forget to include your own Indian policy in the 
same commination. But let us hear no more of her encroach- 
ing spirit in this quarter. It is upon ourselves and not upon 
her that such a spirit may be more fairly charged. I say to the 
gentleman from Illinois, the peculiar champion of annexing 
Texas and occupying the whole of Oregon, mutato nomine, de 
te fabula narratur. 

1 Charles J. Ingersoll of Philadelphia. 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 43 

Finding that Indian slavery then existed in Oregon, 
as shown by public documents, and that there was 
nothing in the Bill to prevent the legalization of domes- 
tic slavery there, Mr. Winthrop then moved that " there 
shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in 
this Territory except for crime, whereof the party shall 
have been duly convicted." This amendment was 
carried by a vote of 131 to 69, and differs only from 
the famous proviso subsequently brought forward by 
David Wilmot in that it applied to territory already 
belonging to the United States, and not to any which 
might thereafter be acquired. 

The following extract from Sketches of the Twenty- 
eighth Congress, printed at this time in a Pennsylvania 
newspaper, gives some idea of the reputation he had 
now gained away from home : — 

" Robert C. Winthrop is, by common consent, one of the 
ablest men in the House, and in a Whig Congress would not 
improbably be Speaker. Candid, honorable, and high-minded, 
he is above the tricks of intrigue, and every progressive step 
of his public life has been marked by increased evidences of 
intellectual power. As a speaker, he is clear, concise, and 
occasionally very eloquent. He speaks but rarely, but is 
always listened to with attention. He has an exceptionally 
fine voice, an impassioned manner, and a warm and brilliant 
imagination, which frequently lights up his speeches with 
gleams of bold and brilliant fancy. He is tall in stature, 
with the face of a scholar and serious thinker. With those 
who know him well, on both sides of the House, he is a great 
favorite, but the criticism has been made that he is a little 
too refined and dignified for some of his surroundings. A 
man of rougher temperament, even if less intellectual, is 
often better suited for a party captain." 



44 A MEMOIR OF 



III. 

The manifest purpose of Tyler and Calhoun to pro- 
cure the annexation of Texas had long excited great 
indignation in New England. On the 29th of January, 
1845, a Convention of the People of Massachusetts 
opposed to such annexation had been held in Faneuil 
Hall, at which a Committee of Correspondence was 
appointed to confer in any emergency with persons in 
this or other States. This Committee, composed of 
three prominent Massachusetts Whigs, — Stephen C. 
Phillips, Charles Allen, and Charles Francis Adams, — 
issued on the 25th of June a circular letter containing 
the following passage : — 

" If the annexation of Texas were already consummated ; if 
it did not necessarily await the further action of Congress ; 
if the voice of the People might not yet be heard in remon- 
strance against it, — we should feel that we could only consider 
and ask you to consider the last alternative of submission to 
a violated Constitution and the will of its violators, or an 
effort to obtain, at whatever hazard, that Constitutional guar- 
anty of Liberty unalloyed with Slavery which alone can 
secure to the country of our Fathers the spirit and substance, 
and not merely the form, of a Republican Government." 

With many expressions of opinion in this circular Mr. 
Winthrop cordially agreed, but the only interpretation 
he was able to place upon the words I have italicised 
in the above passage, and upon very similar expressions 
previously used in the Massachusetts Legislature and 
elsewhere, was that they amounted to a covert sugges- 
tion that under certain circumstances it might be well 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 45 

for New England to secede from the Union because she 
could not have her own way, — a course to which Mr. 
Winthrop was unalterably opposed. From his point of 
view, the resistance of the North to any extension of 
the area of slavery should be a resistance within consti- 
tutional limits and upon the floor of Congress ; and if 
the Democratic party should succeed in compassing the 
annexation of Texas, it would, in his judgment, be 
better to submit to it than to try to break the Union 
into fragments. As his father had left the Federalist 
party because he could not reconcile with loyalty to the 
Union the course of certain Federalist leaders at the 
breaking out of the War of 1812, so he, in turn, depre- 
cated the possibility that a suspicion of disloyalty 
should now attach to Massachusetts Whigs. Having 
been called upon for remarks at the ensuing Fourth 
of July dinner in Faneuil Hall, he offered on that 
occasion the following toast : — 

Our Country, — Whether bounded by the St. John's and 
the Sabine, 1 or however otherwise bounded or described, and 
be the measurements more or less, — still our country, to be 
cherished in all our hearts, to be defended by all our hands I 

This sentiment, long known as "Mr. Winthrop's 
however-bounded toast," though received with enthu- 
siasm at the dinner just mentioned, subsequently gave 
rise to strong expressions of dissent in antislavery 
quarters, being stigmatized as neither more nor less 
than the revolting doctrine of " Our country, right or 

1 After the lapse of more than half a century it may perhaps be 
well to explain that the river Sabine was then the southwestern bound- 
ary of the United States ; the river St. John being then, as now, its 
northeastern boundary. 



^ 



46 A MEMOIR OF 

wrong." In the opinion of its author, however, it 
breathed a spirit of exalted patriotism, and in after- 
life he always referred to it with peculiar satisfaction. 

In the autumn of 1845 he made a variety of minor 
speeches, political and otherwise, besides delivering, on 
the 15th of October, at the Twenty-fifth Anniversary of 
the Boston Mercantile Library Association, a carefully 
prepared lecture on the Influence of Commerce, which 
attained a wide circulation in pamphlet form. Upon 
the reassembling of Congress he offered, on the 19th 
of December, the following resolutions in favor of 
arbitration : — 

Resolved, That the differences between the United States and 
Great Britain, on the subject of the Oregon Territory, are still 
a fit subject for negotiation and compromise, and that satis- 
factory evidence has not yet been afforded that no compromise 
which the United States ought to accept can be effected. 

Resolved, That it would be a dishonor to the age in 
which we live, and in the highest degree discreditable to 
both the nations concerned, if they should suffer themselves 
to be drawn into war upon a question of no immediate or 
practical interest to either of them. 

Resolved, That if no other mode for the amicable adjust- 
ment of this question remains, it is due to the principles of 
civilization and Christianity that a resort to arbitration 
should be had; and that this government cannot relieve 
itself from all responsibility which may follow the failure to 
settle the controversy, while this resort is still untried. 

Resolved, That arbitration does not necessarily involve a 
reference to crowned heads ; and that, if a jealousy of such a 
reference is entertained in any quarter, a commission of able 
and dispassionate citizens, either from the two countries con- 
cerned or from the world at large, offers itself as an obvious 
and unobjectionable alternative. 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 47 

Much disturbed at the warlike attitude so generally 
exhibited, he, a fortnight later (January 3, 1846), again 
advocated arbitration in a speech from which I quote 
several opening sentences : — 

My venerable colleague [J. Q. Adams] and the Chairman 
of the Committee on Foreign Affairs [C. J. Ingersoll] have 
alluded to the course pursued by them last year and have 
told us that they both voted for giving immediate notice to 
Great Britain of our intention to terminate, at the earliest 
day, what has been called the Convention of Joint Occupation. 
Though a much humbler member of this House, I may be 
permitted to allude to the fact that I voted against that pro- 
ceeding last year, and to add that I intend to do so again 
now. ... I believe there exists no difference of opinion that 
if this unfortunate controversy should result in war, our 
country, and the rights of our country on both sides of the 
Rocky Mountains, are to be maintained and defended with 
all the power and all the vigor we possess. I believe there is 
no difference of opinion that in the state of this controversy 
at the present moment we owe it ourselves as guardians of 
the public safety to bestow something more than ordinary 
attention upon our national defences and to place our 
country in a posture of preparation for meeting the worst 
consequences which may befall it. . . . 

I am aware that there are many by whom dissent from 
the extreme views which the Administration would seem 
recently to have adopted will be eagerly seized upon as 
an evidence of a want of what they call patriotism and 
American spirit. I spurn all such imputations in advance. 
Sir, the American spirit that is needed at the present moment, 
needed for our highest honor, needed for our dearest interests, 
is that which dares to confront the mad impulses of a super- 
ficial popular sentiment, and to appeal to the sober second 
thoughts of moral and intelligent men. ... It is said, in 
some quarters, that it is not good party policy to avow such 



48 A MEMOIR OF 

doctrines ; that the friends of the Administration desire 
nothing so much as an excuse for branding the Whigs as 
a peace party ; and that the only course for us in the 
minority to pursue, is to brag about our readiness for war 
with those who brag the loudest. For myself, I utterly repu- 
diate all idea of party obligations or party views in connec- 
tion with this question. I scorn the suggestion that the 
peace of my country is to be regarded as a mere pawn on 
the political chess-board, to be perilled for any mere party- 
triumph. ... No man, of ever so extreme opinions, has ven- 
tured yet to speak upon this question without protesting, in 
the roundest terms, that he was for peace. Even the honor- 
able member from Illinois, who was for giving notice to quit 
at the earliest day, and for proceeding at once to build forts 
or stockades, and for asserting our exclusive jurisdiction over 
the whole Oregon Territory at the very instant at which the 
twelve months should expire, was as stout as any of us for 
preserving peace. My venerable colleague [Mr. Adams], 
too, from whom I always differ with regret, but in differing 
from whom on the present occasion I conform not more to 
my own conscientious judgment than to the opinions of my 
constituents and of a great majority of the people of Massa- 
chusetts, as I understand them, — he, too, I am sure, even in 
that very torrent of eloquent indignation which cost us for a 
moment the order and dignity of the House, could have had 
nothing but the peace of the country at heart. So far as 
peace, then, is concerned, it seems that we are all agreed. 
4 Only it must be an honorable peace,' — that I think is the 
stereotyped phrase of the day ; and all our differences are 
thus reduced to' the question, What constitutes an honorable 
peace ? 



Mr. Winthrop then proceeded with an elaborate 
■gument, clo; 
paragraph : — 



argument, closing his remarks with the following 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 49 

But while I am thus opposed to war for Oregon, or to any 
measures which, in my judgment, are likely to lead to war, I 
shall withhold no vote from any measure which the friends of 
the Administration may bring forward for the defence of the 
country. Whether the Bill be for two regiments or for 
twenty regiments, it shall pass for all me. To the last file, 
to the uttermost farthing, which they may require of us, they 
shall have men and money for the public protection. But 
the responsibility for bringing about such a state of things 
shall be theirs, and theirs only. They can prevent it if they 
please. The peace of the country and the honor of the 
country are still entirely compatible with each other. The 
Oregon question is still perfectly susceptible of an amicable 
adjustment, and I rejoice to believe that it may still be so 
adjusted. We have had omens of peace in the other end of 
the Capital, if none in this. But if war comes, the Admin- 
istration must take the responsibility for all its guilt and all 
its disgrace ! 

On the 12th of March, 1846, he spoke at length, in 
Committee of the Whole, in favor of River and Harbor 
Improvements ; and early in April he had two sharp par- 
liamentary encounters, — one with Charles J. Ingersoll, 
who had charged Webster with being the pensioner of 
New England manufacturers, and with having mis- 
applied the secret-service funds of the State Department ; 
the other with William W. Payne of Alabama, who 
had attacked Massachusetts. The last-named passage 
of arms was thus described by an eye-witness in a letter 
to the " Baltimore Patriot " : — 

"A warm debate sprang up on a bill respecting the con- 
tingent fund, and some carte and tierce operations took place 
between Mr. Winthrop and Mr. Payne, which created quite a 
sensation. You must know that the former is one of the 

4 



1 



50 A MEMOIR OF 

most courteous gentlemen, as well as finished orators, in the 
House. You must also know that Mr. Payne is a large, not 
over-polished, blunt sort of man, who fears nobody, and 
says just what he chooses in anything but a pleasant 
voice or conciliatory manner. To-day he lashed himself into 
a storm similar to that winch was raging at the time outside 
the Capitol, and aimed some ponderous blows at the New 
England States in general, and Massachusetts in particular, 
for aiding the enemy, etc., during the War of 1812. Mr. 
Wintlu'op replied with great spirit and eloquence, showing 
that Massachusetts furnished more and better men in the 
last war than any other State in the Union. Mr. Payne re- 
ferred to a resolution of the Massachusetts Legislature, and 
asked Mr. Wintlu'op if he could point to a single instance 
where a citizen of the Southwest had turned traitor. Mr. 
Winthrop, with great energy and appositeness, exclaimed, 
4 1 reciprocate the gentleman's inquiry.' As for himself, he 
added, he was hardly old enough to recall all the incidents of 
that war in his section of the country, but he well remem- 
bered clambering to a window-casement which overlooked 
Boston Common to see a parade of soldiers about marching 
to the defence of their country ; and as to the resolution re- 
ferred to, the gentleman from Alabama might be pleased to 
know that it had subsequently been expunged. The scene 
was a highly entertaining one, and all who witnessed it 
agreed that Mr. Winthrop did not come off second-best." 

On the 25th of June, 1846, he made still another 
tariff speech, which he entitled The Wants of the Gov- 
ernment and the Wages of Labor. Meantime the Ad- 
ministration had succeeded not merely in picking a 
quarrel with Mexico, but (with the aid of the Demo- 
cratic majority of the House) in creating a schism in 
the Whig party. The little army of General Taylor 
being in great danger, a Bill was hurriedly introduced, 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 51 

on the 11th of May, to authorize the employment of 
volunteers, and into this Bill was inserted in committee 
a preamble, stating that war existed "by the Act of 
Mexico." Every Whig in Congress believed that it 
existed by the Act of James K. Polk and William L. 
Marcy, but after vainly endeavoring to expunge the 
preamble, it was decided to vote for the Bill, preamble 
and all, rather than seem to refuse succor to a United 
States army in distress. The vote stood 174 to 14, the 
majority including such Northern Whigs as Samuel F. 
Vinton and Robert C. Schenck of Ohio, Robert C. 
Winthrop of Massachusetts, Solomon Foot and George 
P. Marsh of Vermont, William A. Moseley of New 
York, Joseph R. Ingersoll, James Pollock and Alex- 
ander Ramsay of Pennsylvania, with many others. 
The minority included John Quincy Adams and four 
other representatives from Massachusetts. That two 
Whig members from the Old Bay State, one of them so 
prominent a man as Mr. Winthrop, should, no matter 
under what circumstances, have accorded a qualified 
assent to war with Mexico, created a great outcry. He 
himself believed that the question was one on which it 
was impossible to give an altogether satisfactory vote, 
and concerning which conscientious men might well 
arrive at opposite opinions. " I have," said he at the 
time, " nothing but respect for the motives, and sym- 
pathy in the general views, of those of my colleagues 
who differed with me on this occasion." 1 Agencies for 

1 There is quite a literature to be consulted on this subject, and any 
reader who may be disposed to go into it at length would do well to look 
up a pamphlet by the late George Ticknor Curtis, entitled "Mr. Win- 
throp's Vote on the War Bill." See also the first volume of Wheeler's 
History of Congress, and a letter in Damon's Life of Abraham Lincoln, 



52 A MEMOIR OF 

the supply of press-cuttings did not then exist, and 
public men were often in ignorance of what was said 
of them, whether of praise or blame. It thus hap- 
pened that it was not until long after the vote in 
question that Mr. Winthrop's attention was drawn to 
severe attacks upon him by an anonymous newspaper 
writer who was believed to be Charles Sumner. The 
latter was not one of his early friends, but they had 
seen a good deal of one another since Mr. Winthrop 
entered Congress, Mr. Sumner being one of his constitu- 
ents and in the habit of writing from time to time on 
public questions. A difference of opinion between them 
had manifested itself more than a year before, when 
Mr. Sumner, in his Fourth of July oration on the 
" True Grandeur of Nations," had taken occasion, in 
denouncing war, to make a good deal of fun of the 
militia. Mr. Winthrop, on the other hand, had been in 
his day an enthusiastic militiaman, two of his elder 
brothers having commanded brigades and he himself a 
company. He fully believed the Massachusetts Militia 
to be not merely a bulwark of law and order, but a good 
training-school for young men ; and he strongly depre- 
cated passages in the oration, which Mr. Sumner con- 
sented to modify. Not to be outdone in frankness, the 
latter took occasion to confess that he had listened to 
Mr. Winthrop's " however-bounded " toast with a pang, 
and that he would have cut off his rio\ht hand rather 

o 

than utter a sentiment which placed country above 
right. 1 This little interchange of criticism did not affect 

who, though not a member of Congress of the time, fully approved the 
course pursued by the majority of the Whigs. 

1 He subsequently styled it " an epigram of dishonest patriotism." 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 53 

their intercourse, and only a few weeks before the 
passage of the War Bill Mr. Winthrop had received a 
friendly letter from Mr. Sumner. He was therefore 
quite unprepared for what seemed to him the un- 
accountably virulent tone of these anonymous news- 
paper attacks, and, conceiving that both his words and 
acts had been misrepresented and perverted, he became 
very angry. Just at this time he received a letter from 
Mr. Sumner avowing the authorship of the articles, 
claiming that he had acted only in the conscientious 
discharge of public duty, asserting that persons of the 
highest consideration in Boston were of opinion that 
Mr. Winthrop " ought to be rebuked," but hoping that 
their pleasant relations might not be interrupted. 
These explanations, however well intended, did not 
appease Mr. Winthrop' s wrath, and in the Appendix to 
the first volume of his " Addresses and Speeches " will 
be found a letter from him to Mr. Sumner, dated 
August 17, 1846, from which I quote a few sentences : 

I am willing to believe that you have not weighed the 
force of your own phrases. Your periculosa facilitas has be- 
trayed you. Your habitual indulgence in strains of extrava- 
gant thought and exaggerated expression, alike when you 
praise and when you censure, has perhaps impaired your 
discrimination in the employment of language. ... I write 
for no purpose of returning railing for railing. I am quite 
ready to forgive the injury you have done me, and I shall 
wish you nothing but success and happiness in your future 
career. But were I to maintain relations of social intercourse 
(as you propose) with one who has thus grossly assailed my 
public morality, it would be an admission of the truth of one 
of the charges which has been arrayed against me in this 
case. It might fairly be construed into an acknowledgment 



54 A MEMOIR OF 

that I recognized different rules of action for my private and 
my political life. I feel compelled, therefore, to decline all 
further communication or conference while matters stand as 
they now do between us. I am conscious of having done 
nothing inconsistent with the cause of Freedom, of Right, of 
Humanity, of Truth, and even of Peace. I yield to no one 
in my attachment to one and all of those great interests. I 
am no stranger, either, to those Christian Churches from 
which one of your articles would seem to excommunicate me ; 
nor do I know anything in my moral or religious character 
which should fairly subject me to be schooled, even by your- 
self. If by any vote I have given I have wounded the con- 
science of anybody else, I sincerely regret it. I certainly 
have not wounded my own conscience. ... I ask no man to 
vindicate my vote, or to agree with me in opinion. I blame 
no man for charging me with error of judgment. But, know- 
ing for myself that my vote was given honestly, conscien- 
tiously, with a sincere belief that it was the best vote which 
an arbitrary and overbearing majority would permit us to 
give, I shall allow no man to cast scandalous imputations on 
my motives and apply base epithets to my acts in public, and 
to call me his friend in private. My hand is not at the ser- 
vice of any one who has denounced it with such ferocity as 
beinu stained with blood. 

It is not unreasonable to suppose that Mr. Winthrop's 
course in this matter may have been somewhat influ- 
enced by letters which he received in Washington from 
friends in Boston, who imputed to Mr. Sumner a secret 
thirst for office and accused him of a deliberate scheme 
to supplant Mr. Winthrop in the future. These repre- 
sentations may have done the subject of them great 
injustice. The last thing I should desire in a memoir 
like this would be to seem to cast reflections upon a 
very distinguished man who subsequently became a 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 55 

member of this Society. It would, however, be an 
impossibility to deal with Mr. Winthrop's career, with- 
out briefly describing, from his own point of view, an 
unfortunate quarrel which became part of the political 
history of that period and was far-reaching in its con- 
sequences. Mr. Sumner's side of it will be found stated 
at length in the exhaustive Life of him by our associate, 
Edward L. Pierce, who, while warmly sympathizing 
with his hero, as it is only natural he should do, has 
yet exhibited towards Mr. Winthrop a marked degree 
of courtesy. With one remark of his I entirely agree, 
where he points out that the latter had " passed from 
his studies to public station, and was naturally more 
sensitive to criticism than if he had undergone the 
discipline and friction of a profession." No one at all 
intimate with Mr. Winthrop would have been disposed 
to deny that his temperament was a sensitive one, that 
his feelings could readily be hurt and his resentment 
sometimes be aroused, by a belief that he had been 
treated with unfairness. His participation in party war- 
fare had been hitherto confined to encounters with the 
hereditary opponents of a Conservative. He now first 
experienced the sensation of a fire in the rear from his 
own ranks, — a fire renewed in succeeding years from 
very unexpected quarters. If he could not altogether 
conceal that he sometimes found it galling, he certainly 
tried hard to exhibit, upon some notable occasions, a 
decree of Christian forbearance not often met with in 
a politician. 1 

1 As an instance of this, I may mention that Mr. Sumner had written 
him that his letter to the " Courier " had received " the entire approba- 
tion " of the editor, Joseph T. Buckingham. Mr. Winthrop's colleague, 
George Ashmun, who had voted against the War Bill, but who had 



56 A MEMOIR OF 

In consequence of the attacks then made upon him, 
he abandoned his former purpose of not being again a 
candidate for Congress, and accepted a new nomination 
in order that his conduct might be passed upon by his 
constituents. This time he had not merely a Demo- 
cratic competitor to contend with, but also a candidate 
of the disaffected members of his own party, "Con- 
science-Whigs," as they were then often styled. The 
result was his triumphant return, the vote standing : 
Winthrop, 5,980 ; all others, 3,372. 

In the canvass immediately preceding this election 
he preferred not to notice an open letter from Mr. 
Sumner to himself, dated Oct. 25, 1846, and circulated 
as a campaign document. It embodied the substance 
of the original charges and may be found in the col- 
lected works of its author. In an elaborate speech, 
entitled Whig Predictions and Whig Policy, delivered 
by him in the Whig State Convention in Faneuil Hall 
a few weeks earlier (Sept. 23, 1846) he made the fol- 
lowing allusion to what had taken place : — 

I do not forget that in regard to some incidental questions 
connected with this war there have been differences of 
opinion among friends at home, and differences of votes 
among friends at Washington. Upon these topics of con- 
troversy, however, I do not intend to touch. If anybody 

regretted the tone of the letter in question, subsequently asked Buck- 
ingham why he had printed such offensive expressions. Buckingham 
replied that they were not in the copy approved by him, but were 
interpolated in the printing-room without his knowledge, and he forth- 
with wrote Mr. Winthrop in explanation, offering to produce the origi- 
nal proof with additions in Mr. Sumner's handwriting. Mr. Winthrop 
was urged to make Buckingham's letter public, but he declined to do so 
on the ground that Mr. Sumner must have forgotten that Buckingham 
did not see the revised proof, and that he had no wish to take advantage 
of a lapse of memory. 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 57 

has come here, either by direct expression or by covert 
allusion, to cast imputations, to provoke collisions,' or to stir 
up strife, I pass him by, with whatever respect other people 
may think him entitled to. We are assembled here to 
remember our agreements and not our differences. We have 
come here to reconcile all differences, and to do what we can 
to sustain and advance our common principles and our 
common objects. . . . 

Sir, I trust there is no man here who is not ready to stand 
by the Constitution of the Country. I trust there is no man 
here who is not willing to hold fast to the Union of the 
States, be its limits ultimately fixed a little on one side, or a 
little on the other side, of the line of his own choice. For 
myself, I will not contemplate the idea of the dissolution of 
the Union in any conceivable event. There are no bound- 
aries of sea or land, of rock or river, of desert or mountain, 
to which I will not try at least to carry out my love of 
country, whenever they shall really be the boundaries of my 
country. If the day of dissolution ever comes, it shall bring 
the evidence of its own irresistible necessity with it. I avert 
my eyes from all recognition of such a necessity in the 
distance. Nor am I ready for any political organizations or 
platforms less broad and comprehensive than those which 
may include and uphold the whole Whig party of the United 
States. But all this is consistent, and shall, in my own case, 
practically consist with a just sense of the evils of slavery ; 
with an earnest opposition to everything designed to prolong 
or extend it ; with a firm resistance to all its encroachments 
on Northern rights ; and, above all, with an uncompromising 
hostility to all measures for introducing new slave States and 
new slave territories into our Union. 1 

In December, 1846, the merchants of Philadelphia 
entertained Mr. Webster at a formal public banquet, 

1 Henry Wilson characterized this speech as " able, adroit, and elo- 
quent." See " Rise and Fall of the Slave Power," vol. ii. p. 119. 



f 



58 A MEMOIR OF 

which Mr. Winthrop, then on his way to Washington, 
attended as an invited guest, but without expectation 
of taking any part. He was, however, called upon, and 
a correspondent of the "Boston Journal" paid him the 
following compliment : — 

" Mr. Winthrop was exceedingly happy in his remarks. I 
have listened to him in Faneuil Hall and other places, but I 
never before heard him speak with such spirit, force, and elo- 
quence. Alluding to Mr. Webster, he said Massachusetts 
could not claim him by birth, that honor belonging to New 
Hampshire ; but there was honor enough in him for two 
States, — yes, enough for six and twenty States! When he 
closed, nine cheers were given, all standing, for Massachusetts 
and Winthrop!" 

A few weeks later, on the 8th of January, 1847, 
he delivered a carefully prepared speech on the war 
with Mexico. In the course of it, after quoting a 
passage from the Writings of Madison, he continued 
as follows : — 

Much has been said in the course of this debate about old- 
fashioned Federalism, but here are the doctrines of old-fash- 
ioned Democracy, in the very language of one of its ablest 
and most honored masters. And how strangely do they con- 
trast with the manifestoes of that modern brood, which boast 
themselves so vaingloriously of their borrowed plumes ! In 
which one of these golden sentences of James Madison do 
you find any justification of the idea that the Executive De- 
partment of the government is to be implicitly trusted in time 
of war, and that the vigilance of Congress is to suffer itself 
to be lulled asleep by the insipid opiate of a President's Mes- 
sage ? What can be more emphatic than the declaration that 
'those who are to conduct a war cannot, in the nature of 
things, be proper or safe judges whether a war ought to be 



ROBERT C. WLNTHROP. 59 

commenced, continued, or concluded ' ? Who can read these 
paragraphs without being deeply impressed by the sentiment 
which pervades them, that if the true spirit of Democracy 
calls upon us ever to be jealous, with an exceeding jealousy, 
of Executive power, it is when that power has been armed 
with the fearful prerogative of war, and when, as now, that 
prerogative is masked behind ' a symbol of peace ' ? If the 
Democratic sensibilities of James Madison were startled and 
shocked when George Washington, that 'prodigy of many 
centuries,' as he well entitled him, thought fit to forestall the 
deliberations of Congress by issuing a proclamation of neu- 
trality, what would he have said had he lived to see a Presi- 
dent ' such as may be expected in the ordinary successions of 
Magistracy,' not merely involving the country in war by his 
own arts, but proceeding to stigmatize as traitors all who 
may think fit to inquire into the causes of the war, or to 
judge for themselves whether it ought to be continued or 
concluded. . . . 

As to the origin of the war, I shall say but few words. It 
should never be forgotten that its primary cause was the 
annexation of Texas, — a measure pressed upon the country, 
by its peculiar advocates, with the view of strengthening, 
extending, and perpetuating the institution of domestic sla- 
very. Sir, I cherish no feelings of ill-will towards Texas. 
Now that she is a member of our Union, I should speak of 
her in the terms which belong to the intercourse of sister 
States. But I cannot fail to speak plainly in regard to the 
unconstitutional act of her annexation and the disastrous con- 
sequences which have thus far attended it. Who forgets the 
glowing terms in which the addition of that lone star 1 to our 
American constellation was heralded ? How much of prosper- 
ity and of peace, of protection to our labor and of defence to 
our land, was augured from it ! Who can now reflect on its 
consequences as already developed, who can think of the 

1 The Texan flag bore a single star, and she was often called the 
Lone Star State. 



60 A MEMOIR OF 

deep wound which, in the judgment of man}-, it has inflicted 
on our Constitution ; of the alienations and heart-burnings 
which it has produced among different members of the 
Union ; of the fearful looking-for of disunion which it has 
excited ; of the treasure it has cost and the precious lives it 
has wasted, in the war now in progress ; of the poison it has 
in so many ways mingled with the previously healthful cur- 
rent of our national career, — who can reflect on all this 
without being reminded of another lone star, which ' fell 
from heaven, becoming as it were a lamp, and it fell upon 
the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters, 
and the name of the star is called Wormwood, and the third 
part of the waters became wormwood, and many men died of 
the waters because they were bitter.' 1 

After proceeding to denounce the unwarrantable acts 
of the Executive and maintaining that an honorable 
peace need involve no dismemberment of Mexico, he 
continued as follows : — 

I am not about to depreciate the desirableness to the com- 
merce of our country of a good harbor or two on the Pacific 
Ocean. If a strip of California could be added to our Oregon 
possessions, under proper circumstances and with the general 
consent of the country, I should be one of the last persons to 
object to it. But the idea that it is worthy of us to take ad- 
vantage of this war to wrest it from Mexico b}* force of arms, 
and to protract the war until she will consent to cede it to us 
by a treaty of peace, I utterly repudiate. . . . 

I have no time to discuss the subject of slavery on this 
occasion, nor should I desire to discuss it in this connection, 
if I had more time. But I must not omit a few plain words 
on the momentous issue which has now been raised. I speak 
for Massachusetts — I believe I speak the sentiments of all 
New England, and of many other States out of New England 

1 Revelation viii. 10, 11. 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. Gl 

— when I say that, upon this question, our minds are made 
up. So far as we have power — constitutional or moral 
power — to control political events, we are resolved that 
there shall be no further extension of the territory of this 
Union subject to the institutions of slavery. This is not a 
matter to argue about with us. My honorable friend from 
Georgia [Mr. Toombs] must pardon me if I do not enter into 
any question with him whether such a policy be equal or 
just. It may be that the North does not consider the insti- 
tution of slavery a fit thing to be the subject of equal distri- 
bution or nice weighing in the balances. I cannot agree 
with hini that the South gains nothing by the Constitution 
but the right to reclaim fugitives. Surely he has forgotten 
that slavery is the basis of representation in this House. But 
I do not intend to argue the case. I wish to deal with it 
calmly but explicitly. I believe the North is ready to stand 
by the Constitution, with all its compromises, as it now is. I 
do not intend, moreover, to throw out any threats of disunion, 
whatever may be the result. I do not intend now or ever, to 
contemplate disunion as a cure for any imaginable evil. At 
the same time I do not intend to be driven from a firm ex- 
pression of purpose, and a steadfast adherence to principle, 
by any threats of disunion from any other quarter. The peo- 
ple of New England whom I have the privilege to speak for, 
do not desire, as I understand their views — I know my own 
heart and my own principles and can at least speak for them 
— to gain one foot of territory by conquest, and as the result 
of the prosecution of the war with Mexico. I do not believe 
that even the Abolitionists of the North — though I am one 
of the last persons who would be entitled to speak their sen- 
timents — would be unwilling to be found in combination 
with Southern gentlemen who may see fit to espouse this 
doctrine. We desire peace. We believe that this war ought 
never to have been begun, and we do not wish to have it made 
the pretext for plundering Mexico of one foot of her lands. 
But if the war is to be prosecuted, and if territories are to be 



62 A MEMOIR OF 

conquered and annexed, we shall stand fast and forever to the 
principle that, so far as we are concerned, these territories shall 
be the exclusive abode of freemen. 

On the 22d of February, 1847, the Army Bill being 
under consideration in Committee of the Whole, Mr. 
Winthrop moved several provisos to the first clause in 
order to limit the control of the Executive over the 
appropriations, and he supported his views in a speech 
of some length, entitled the Conquest of Mexican Ter- 
ritory, from which I quote briefly as follows : — 

I am ready now and at all times to unite in maintaining the 
National credit. I do not desire to see the evils of an odious 
war multiplied and aggravated by disordered finances and a 
bankrupt Treasury. If our armies are to be kept afoot, 
wherever they may be, and in whatever numbers they may 
be, I am for having money enough in the Treasury for feed- 
ing them, and clothing them, and paying them. I am for 
paying men, too, if possible, not with depreciated paper, but 
in a sound, redeemable currency. I desire to leave the Ad- 
ministration no apology or pretence for supporting our troops 
by a system of pillage and plunder in the enemy's country. 
There are purposes of peace, too, which require money. 
There are just debts to be paid, important establishments to 
be supported, cherished institutions to be maintained, noble 
charities to be administered ; and the Treasury must be sup- 
plied to meet the requirements of them all. With these views 
I voted for the Loan Bill. I believed it to be a necessary pro- 
vision for sustaining the public credit. . . . 

I voted for the Three Million Bill because I wished to get 
the great principle which the proviso embodied fairly upon 
the Statute-book. 1 I believe it to be a perfectly constitutional 
principle and an eminently conservative principle. I believe 
that whenever the principle of this proviso shall be irrevoca- 

1 The Wilmot Proviso. 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 63 

bly established, shall be considered as unchangeable as the 
laws of the Medes and Persians, then, and not till then, shall 
we have permanent peace with other countries and fixed 
boundaries for our own country. . . . Much as I deplore the 
war in which we are involved, — deeply as I regret the whole 
policy of annexation, — if the result of these measures should 
be to engraft the policy of this proviso permanently and ine- 
radicably upon our American system, I should regard it as a 
blessing cheaply purchased. ... If we could at last lay down 
permanently the boundaries of our Republic ; if we could feel 
that we had extinguished forever the lust of extended domin- 
ion in the bosoms of the American people ; if we could pre- 
sent that old god, Terminus, of whom we have heard such 
eloquent mention elsewhere, not with outstretched arm still 
pointing to new territories in the distance, but with limbs 
lopped off, as the Romans sometimes represented him, be- 
tokening that he had reached his very furthest goal ; if we 
could be assured that our limits were to be no farther ad- 
vanced, either by purchase or conquest, by fraud or by force, 
— then, then, we might feel that we had taken a bond of fate 
for the perpetuation of our Union. It is in this spirit that I 
voted for the proviso in the Three Million Bill. It is in this 
spirit that I offer the third proviso to the Thirty Million Bill 
before us. Pass them both; cut off, by one and the same 
stroke, all idea both of the extension of slavery and the ex- 
tension of territory ; and we shall need neither the three 
millions nor the thirty millions for securing peace and har- 
mony, both at home and abroad. 

The third proviso then moved by Mr. Winthrop was 
as follows : — 

Provided, further, That these appropriations are made 
with no view of sanctioning any prosecution of the existing 
war with Mexico for the acquisition of territory to form new 
States to be added to the Union, or for the dismemberment 
in any way of the Republic of Mexico. 



64 A MEMOIR OF 

It was defeated by a strict party vote of 124 to 76, 
the minority including Toombs and Stephens of Georgia 
with other Southern Whigs. 



IV. 

The Twenty-ninth Congress expired March 4, 1847, 
when Mr. Winthrop dismissed politics from his thoughts 
and made haste to sail for Europe, — a trip he had long 
had in view, but either domestic engagements or public 
duties had hitherto interfered with it. He had friends 
and relatives both in England and France, and he took 
with him nattering letters of introduction from Mr. 
Webster and Mr. Everett, which made his first experi- 
ence of London society an exceptionally agreeable one. 
In a fragment of autobiography privately printed by 
him not long before his death and now to be found in 
many public libraries, 1 he gave some account of his 
intercourse with European celebrities at different peri- 
ods, and it need only be mentioned here that among 
the persons of distinction of whom he was privileged 
to see a good deal in 1847 were the Duke of Welling- 
ton, Sir Robert Peel, the poet Rogers, the historians 
Thiers, Mignet, Milman, Thirlwall and Hallam, Arch- 
bishop Whately, Bishops Wilberforce and Blomfield, 
Lord Lansdowne (then President of the Council) Lords 
Aberdeen and Stanley (both afterward prime ministers) 
Prince Louis Napoleon (then in exile in London), and 
King Louis Philippe, who twice received Mr. Winthrop 
informally at Neuilly. 

1 A Fragment of Autobiography. Reminiscences of Foreign Travel, 
by Robert C. Winthrop. Privately printed, 1894. 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 65 

He had hardly returned home before he was called 
upon to attend the Whig State Convention at Worcester 
on the 29th of September, where a vigorous effort was 
made by the Conscience-Whigs to commit the party to 
a positive pledge to support no Presidential candidate 
who was not openly opposed to the extension of slavery. 
From Mr. Winthrop's point of view, the only practical 
effect of such a platform would have been to make a 
breach in the Conservative party as a national organi- 
zation, thereby facilitating the election of a Democratic 
President, certain to be more obnoxious than any South- 
ern Whig. In the debate which ensued, the amendment 
was ably advocated by Charles Francis Adams, Allen, 
Sumner, and others, while Mr. Winthrop was almost 
alone in opposition to it. 1 He was obliged to speak 
more than once and with great earnestness, but in the 
end he carried his point. Rarely satisfied with his own 
productions and generally feeling that he might have 
done better, he took some pride in his speeches at this 
Convention, as they were delivered on the spur of the 
moment, with no previous preparation. Finding them 
very inadequately reported, he intended to write them 
out for future publication, but an accumulation of busi- 
ness resulting from his absence abroad caused him to 
postpone doing so until too late, to his subsequent regret. 
Just before the State election he made a campaign 
speech in Faneuil Hall in which he took occasion to refer 
as follows to what had happened the year before : — 

I am glad to find myself once more standing face to face 
with so large a body of my constituents. At our last annual 

1 His near connection, John Chipman Gray, a former Vice-President 
of this Society, actively supported him. 









(36 A MEMOIR OF 

election I was myself a candidate for your suffrages, and 
agreeably to the old custom (whether more honored in the 
breach or in the observance, I leave you to judge) I took no 
part in the canvass. I cannot but remember that on that 
occasion I was something more than a candidate. I was on 
trial, — a prisoner at the bar, I had almost said ; arraigned 
before the country, if for no very high crimes, at least for 
what were stigmatized in some quarters as very grave mis- 
demeanors, — a toast on the 4th of July, and a vote on the 
11th of May. These were the indictments, and political 
death was the penalty, and this is the first opportunity I have 
had of making my acknowledgments, my profound and hearty 
acknowledgments, for the signal verdict you rendered in my 
favor. I would not prolong or revive the memory of that 
controversy, or of any other controversy which may have 
occurred earlier or later between those professing to be real 
Whigs. I, sir, have treasured up no malice, no hatred, and no 
uncharitableness against those who differed from me. Heaven 
forbid that the time should come in New England, or within 
a thousand miles of New England, when the conduct of can- 
didates may not be fearlessly canvassed and their misconduct 
boldly condemned. But meeting my constituents for the first 
time since then, and standing upon the very threshold of the 
duty to which they have again called me, I cannot avoid mak- 
ing this passing allusion to their constant kindness. I may 
add, however, that I am unable to indulge in any ecstatic emo- 
tion of delight at having been, for the fourth time, returned 
to Congress ; for while I shall always feel it to be an honor to 
represent the city of Boston, yet I see nothing to cause me to 
anticipate peculiar pleasure in taking part in the national leg- 
islature in the present state of parties and of the country. I 
see only discouragement, difficulty, and embarrassment ahead. 

The Thirtieth Congress came into being on the 4th of 
March, 1847, but did not assemble until December. The 
Whigs had in it a small majority more apparent than 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 67 

real, as three Northern members (Joshua R. Giddings 
of Ohio, Amos Tuck of New Hampshire, and John G. 
Palfrey of Massachusets), though still counted as Whigs, 
were not likely to vote for any candidate whose views 
on the slavery question did not satisfy them, while it 
was apprehended that several Southern Whig members 
whose districts were close might not be willing to vote 
for a supporter of the Wilmot Proviso, for fear of losing 
their seats. The Whig candidate for speaker in the 
preceding Congress had been Samuel F. Vinton of 
Ohio, — a man so generally esteemed by his associates 
that his renomination was almost a matter of course, 
unless his age and health should compel him to decline. 
In this latter event the person most prominently men- 
tioned for the succession was Mr. Winthrop, and after 
him Caleb B. Smith of Indiana, afterward Secretary of 
the Interior in the first Cabinet of President Lincoln. 
Mr. Winthrop and Mr. Vinton had long been intimate. 
After the death of Mr. Saltonstall, Mr. Vinton was the 
member of the House whom Mr. Winthrop most fre- 
quently consulted upon public affairs and Mr. Vinton 
had voted for him for Speaker in 1845. They both 
reached Washington by the 1st of December, and on 
the 4th Mr. Winthrop wrote a friend as follows: — 

You may hear stories about my having said this, that, or 
the other, but the truth is I have said nothing and done 
nothing, having only called on those who have called upon 
me, and spoken to those who have spoken to me. To Vinton, 
however, I have talked freely. He will feel complimented by 
a nomination, but has no idea of running, being good enough 
to say I ought unquestionably to be Speaker. Whether I 
shall be, is very doubtful. Our majority is narrow, and while 



V 



68 A MEMOIR OF 

I am not enough of an antislavery man for some of our 
Northern friends, I am too much of a Wilmot Proviso man 
for some of our Southern ones. Indeed, Democratic newspa- 
pers are now holding me up as 'little better than an aboli- 
tionist,' an epithet which ought to mollify Giddings, who, I 
am told, boasts that he can and will defeat me. The bitter- 
ness attributed to him where I am concerned is hardly to be 
accounted for by our political differences in recent years, 
and I imagine I must have trodden on his toes without 
knowing it. 

Mr. Winthrop then kept a hurried, irregular diary, 
the following brief entry in which relates to his 
nomination : — 

Saturday, Dec. 4. In the evening to the caucus. Vinton 
nominated on first ballot. He declined with a very handsome 
allusion to me. On the second ballot I had 57 votes to 25 for 
Smith. Accepted in a few simple words. 

The next day the following correspondence passed 
between Mr. Winthrop and one of his Massachusetts 
colleagues : — 

53 Coleman's, Washington. 
Dec. 5, 1817. 

Dear Sir, — It would give me pleasure to aid by my vote 
in placing you in the Chair of the House of Representatives. 
But I have no personal hopes or fears to dictate my course in 
the matter, and the great consideration for me must be that 
of the policy which the Speaker will impress on the action of 
the House. Not to trouble you with suggestions as to sub- 
ordinate points, there are some leading questions on which 
it may be presumed that you have a settled purpose. May I 
respectfully inquire whether, if elected Speaker, it is your 
intention : 

So to constitute the Committees of Foreign Relations and 
of Ways and Means as to arrest the existing war ; 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 69 

So to constitute the Committee on Territories as to obstruct 
the legal establishment of Slavery within any Territory ; 

So to constitute the Committee on the Judiciary as to favor 
the repeal of the law of Feb. 12, 1793, which denies trial by 
jury to persons charged with being slaves ; to give a fair and 
favorable consideration to the question of the repeal of those 
Acts of Congress which now sustain Slavery in this District ; 
and to further such measures as may be in the power of 
Congress to remedy the grievances of which Massachusetts 
complains at the hands of South Carolina, in respect to 
ill treatment of her citizens. 

I should feel much obliged to you for a reply at your early 
convenience, and I should be happy to be permitted to com- 
municate it, or its substance, to some gentlemen who enter- 
tain similar views to mine on this class of questions. I am, 
dear sir, with great personal esteem, 

Your friend and servant, 

John G. Palfeey. 

Washington, Coleman's Hotel, 
Dec. 5, 1847. 

Dear Sir, — Your letter of to-day has this moment been 
handed to me. I am greatly obliged by the disposition you 
express 'to aid in placing me in the Chair of the House of 
Representatives.' But I must be perfectly candid in saying 
to you that, if I am to occupy that chair, I must go into it 
without pledges of any sort. I have not sought the place. I 
have solicited no man's vote. At a meeting of the Whig 
members of the House last evening (at which, however, 1 
believe that you were not present) I was formally nominated 
as the Whig candidate for Speaker, and I have accepted that 
nomination. But I have uniformly said to all who have 
inquired of me that my policy in organizing the House must 
be sought for in my general conduct and character as a 
public man. 



-4 



70 A MEMOIR OF 

I have been for seven years a member of Congress from our 
common State of Massachusetts. My votes are on record. 
My speeches are in print. If they have not been such as to 
inspire confidence in my course, nothing that I could get up 
for the occasion, in the shape of pledges or declaration of 
purpose, ought to do so. Still less could I feel it consistent 
with my own honor, after having received and accepted a 
general nomination, and just on the eve of the election, to 
frame answers to specific questions like those which you have 
proposed, to be shown to a few gentlemen, as you suggest, 
and to be withheld from the great body of the Whigs. Deeply, 
therefore, as I should regret to lose the distinction which the 
Whigs in Congress have offered to me, and through me to 
New England, for want of the aid of a Massachusetts vote, I 
must yet respectfully decline any more direct reply to the 
interroo-atories which vour letter contains. I remain, with 
every sentiment of personal esteem, 

Your friend and servant, 

ROBEKT C. WlXTHEOP. 

The election took place on Monday, December 6, the 
first vote being as follows : — 

Whole number of votes cast 220 

Necessary for a choice Ill 

Robert C. Winthrop, of Massachusetts (Whig) 108 
Linn Boyd, of Kentucky (Democrat) ... 61 
Robert McClelland, of Michigan (Democrat) . 23 
John A. McClernand, of Illinois (Democrat) . 11 
Scattering (including the votes of the four can- 
didates just mentioned) 17 

An analysis of this vote shows that six members, 
then classed as Whigs, did not vote for Mr. Winthrop, 
three from each section of the Union, the Northern ones 
being Giddings, Tuck, and Palfrey, the Southern ones 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 71 

William M. Cocke of Tennessee, John TV. Jones of 
Georgia, and Patrick W. Tompkins of Mississippi. 
On the second vote, Jones of Georgia wheeled into 
line, and Tompkins of Mississippi, though he could 
not bring his mind to support the candidate of his party, 
consented not to vote at all. 1 The result was that Mr. 
Winthrop, who on the first vote was three votes 
short, now needed but one. John Quincy Adams then 
sent George Ashmun to Palfrey to ask him to abandon 
further opposition. "If," said the venerable ex-Presi- 
dent, " I can vote for Mr. Winthrop with a clear con- 
science, I should suppose Dr. Palfrey could." Ashmun 
reported that Palfrey was rather non-committal, but 
expressed some hope that, in the end, Amos Tuck 
would not suffer the Speakership to go to a Democrat. 
Whether this conjecture was well founded is immaterial, 
as, a few moments later, the election was decided by 
an unexpected circumstance. The clerk had begun to 
call the roll for the third time, when a Democratic 
member, Isaac E. Holmes of South Carolina, arose, and, 
draping himself in one of the long cloaks then in 
fashion, marched solemnly out of the hall, disregarding 
the whispered remonstrances of several of his neighbors. 
One less vote was therefore required to constitute an 
election, and Mr. Winthrop was declared Speaker. 
Holmes had long been one of his particular friends, 
and was fond of describing himself as an " Independent 
Jeffersonian," upon whom party ties were not always 
binding. He was probably influenced quite as much 
by dislike of Mr. Giddings as by regard for Mr. Win- 
throp ; and in a published letter to his constituents he 

1 Cocke of Tennessee made no sign, and was perhaps paired. 



f 



i 



72 A MEMOIR OF 

vindicated his action substantially on the ground that 
he had defeated the machinations of Abolitionists to 
control the organization of the House. Another South- 
ern friend of Mr. Wintlirop, Carrington Cabell of Florida, 
a Whig, was bitterly attacked by Democratic newspapers 
in his district for voting for "the Abolitionist Wintlirop ; " 
but, fortunately for himself, he was able to show that 
the Democratic Speaker of the previous Congress (John 
W. Davis of Indiana) had given similar votes, upon 
the Wilmot Proviso and the Right of Petition, to those 
for which a Whig Speaker was now denounced. I am 
particular to mention the precise circumstances of this 
nomination and election because they are described with 
more or less inaccuracy in various works of reference. 
Not to refer to writers of less note, two very distin- 
guished ones give quite contradictory accounts of what 
occurred : Henry Wilson stating, on the authority of 
Isaac E. Holmes, a Democrat, that " the Southern 
Whigs opposed to the Wilmot Proviso nominated Mr. 
Wintlirop in caucus in opposition to a majority of the 
Northern Whigs, who were in favor of the Wilmot Pro- 
viso and who opposed the nomination of Mr. Win- 
tlirop;" 1 while James G. Blaine, on the other hand, 
says, " Robert C. Wintlirop was nominated in the Whig 
Caucus over Samuel F. Vinton of Ohio because he had 
voted for the Wilmot Proviso and Mr. Vinton against it. 
Mr. Vinton was senior in age and long senior in service 
to Mr. Wintlirop, and the decision against him created 
no little feeling in Whig circles, especially in the West." 2 

1 The Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America. By Henry 
Wilson, vol. ii. p. 27. 

* Twenty Years of Congress, 1S61-1S81. By James G. Blaine, vol. 
i. p. 72. 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 73 

Mr. Winthrop had always supposed that, of the fifty- 
seven votes received by him in the caucus, at least as 
many came from the North as from the South, though, 
except in a few cases, he was not sure who voted for 
him ; and he was much taken aback that he should be 
accused, some seven and thirty years after the event, 
of having supplanted his friend Vinton. Through a 
mutual friend he pointed out to Mr. Blaine that he had 
only received the nomination after Vinton had been 
nominated and declined, that he had owed the nomi- 
nation more to Vinton than to any one man, and that 
an examination of the " Congressional Globe " would 
show that Vinton had again and again voted for the 
Wilmot Proviso. Mr. Blaine expressed polite regret for 
his mistake, which he ascribed to an incorrect account of 
the caucus which he had met with hi a newspaper of 
that period. 1 

Mr. Winthrop had a pronounced taste for Scriptural 
quotations, and his short address on taking the chair 
as Speaker contained the following passage : — 

In a time of war, in a time of high political excitement, in a 
time of momentous national controversy, I see before me the 
representatives of the people almost equally divided, not 
merely as the votes of tins morning have already indicated, 
in their preference for persons, but in opinion and in prin- 
ciples, on many of the most important questions on which 
they have assembled to deliberate. May I not reasonably 
claim, in advance from you all, something more than an 

1 In the sixth volume of the second series of this Society's Proceedings, 
pp. 72-76, will be found some reminiscences by Mr. Winthrop of men 
with whom he had been intimate in Congress, more particularly of 
Samuel F. Vinton, together with an allusion to Mr. Blaine's statements 
upon this and other subjects. 



74 A MEMOIR OF 

ordinary measure of forbearance and indulgence, for whatever 
inability I may manifest in meeting the exigencies and em- 
barrassments which I cannot hope to escape ? And may I not 
reasonably implore, with something more than common fer- 
vency, upon your labors and upon my own, the blessing of 
that Almighty Power whose recorded attribute it is that 
' He maketh men to be of one mind in a house ' ? 1 

A week later he wrote a friend : — 

Nobody can exaggerate the labor and anxiety to which I 
have been subjected. If I had been invested with the entire 
patronage of the Presidency, I could not have been teased and 
solicited more incessantly. Boys who want to be pages, 
women who want to sell apples, men who want to be clerks, 
have surrounded me at every turn. Orphans and widows 
have clustered around me like bees, and where they could ex- 
tract no honey, have left a sting. But the assignment of 
committees has been the hardest work I ever did in my life. 
In order to get through with it in season, I more than once 
locked myself into my study with a confidential clerk from 
noon till midnight, and now that I have fairly thrown off the 
mountain, I have the discomfort of knowing that I have dis- 
satisfied not a few of my friends and probably all my enemies. 
Indeed, there is no such thing as fully satisfying one's self in 
the solution of such a problem. Aside from the difficulty of 
reconciling geographical claims, there have been personal 
embarrassments. One of them was what to do with J. Q. 
Adams. Of late years he has declined to serve on commit- 
tees ; but this year, perhaps because his own party is again in 
power, he has signified no such purpose. The only place 
adequate to his dignity and experience was the Chairmanship 
of Foreign Affairs, but his views are so peculiar that, in the 

1 An amusing discussion took place with reference to this quotation. 
Some newspaper writers, unable to find it in the Bible, imagined that 
they had caught Mr. Winthrop tripping. It is from the 68th psalm 
in the Psalter of the Book of Common Prayer. 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 75 

existing condition of the country, I was afraid to risk it. 
Then came the question what to do with our excellent crony, 
Joseph R. Ingersoll. He has been first of the Whig minority 
of Ways and Means, but his views as to the duty of sustain- 
ing the war are so unqualified that, if I had made him Chair- 
man, I should have seemed to favor further invasion of 
Mexico. I have given this post to Vinton, and I think 
wisely, but Toombs, as you may imagine, is a little dis- 
gruntled at the preference. Then that good fellow, Hugh 
White, wished to be on the Ways and Means, but I could not 
leave the city of New York unrepresented on a committee 
which deals with such great financial and commercial in- 
terests. Then our friend Jacob Collamer wished to be Chair- 
man of the Judiciary, but this interfered with my disposition 
of Ingersoll. The whole business has been as intricate as a 
Chinese puzzle, and it would require many sheets of foolscap 
to give you half my reasons. I am truly sorry the North 
Carolina Whigs feel slighted, but I fully supposed Shepperd 
would be best pleased by having little or nothing to do. The 
only man who has a right to feel placed below his desert is 
Grinnell, who most kindly and generously declined being 
considered for a Chairmanship. I should have been glad to 
have heaped coals of fire on Palfrey by assigning him to 
something better, but I could not accomplish this without 
seeming to give undue preference to Massachusetts. 

It is unnecessary to describe in detail the composition 
of these committees. It is enough to say that while 
Mr. Giddings broadly charged that they " were all ar- 
ranged in such a manner as to effect the political objects 
which he [Mr. Winthrop] had in view," Mr. Toombs, 
on the other hand (after his quarrel with Mr. Winthrop 
in 1849), maintained that they were characterized by 
gross unfairness to the South. A particularly sharp 
controversy arose over the Committee on the District of 



VG A MEMOIR OF 

Columbia, Mr. Toombs complaining that it consisted of 
five Northern members to four Southern ones, and Mr. 
Giddings attacking it as a committee in the interest of 
the South, one of the Northern members, as he asserted, 
being practically a slaveholder. The allusion was to a 
colleague of his own from Ohio, Thomas 0. Edwards, 
who forthwith proceeded to denounce Mr. Giddings in 
print as a deliberately untruthful person, and claimed 
that his (Edwards's) relation to slavery had been similar 
to that of James G. Birney and John G. Palfrey, both 
of whom had inherited slaves and manumitted them. 
The whole matter is summed up, with a degree of fair- 
ness unusual in a political opponent, by our associate 
Pierce, who says: — 

The explanation of Palfrey's opposition to Winthrop at 
Washington, and Sumner's and Adams's in Massachusetts, 
is that they regarded him then, as they regarded Webster 
later, as the great obstruction to the antislavery movement 
in the State. Winthrop, aside from what may be said on 
the slavery question, made one of the best speakers who ever 
filled that eminent chair; and even the antislavery men 
were not entirely agreed that he did injustice in his appoint- 
ments of committees by which questions concerning slavery 
were to be considered. Horace Mann thought him fair in 
this respect. . . . At this distance from the controversy which 
left many stings behind, and after trying to judge it fairly, 
this may be considered a just conclusion : Winthrop was 
placed in the chair by his party as a whole, by the votes of 
Southern as well as Northern members, and could not be 
expected to discriminate between them ; but all that could 
be expected was that he should hold the balance fairly be- 
tween the conflicting forces within his party. He was not, 
and did not pretend to be, a Free-Soiler, — not even a Whig 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 77 

who had made opposition to slavery paramount; and while 
it was right for Palfrey to question him, it was equally his 
right, even his duty, to make no private pledges as to his 
action as Speaker. 1 

The dissatisfaction of extremists with some of his 
committees was not the only fault found with Mr. Win- 
throp at the outset of his Speakership. It was for a 
moment cast into the shade by a local grievance. The 
Capitol was then under the joint authority of the Vice- 
President and the Speaker, each controlling their respec- 
tive halves of the building, in the basement of which 
had gradually been established two eating and drinking 
saloons, frequented alike by Congressmen and by the 
public, and not infrequently the scene of disgusting in- 
ebriety. Mr. Winthrop was by no means a rigid Puri- 
tan. He habitually drank wine at dinner. He was no 
stranger to the occasional use of whiskey for the 
stomach's sake, and he thoroughly enjoyed tobacco in 
the form of cigars until he was eighty-five years old. 
But he detested the convivial habit of gathering around 
a public counter to partake of spirits between meals, 
believing it to be the most prolific cause of intemper- 
ance. One of his first official acts was to close the bar 
under the House wing, — a course freely commended by 
judicious persons, but which gave rise to much private 
grumbling, including not a few letters of remonstrance 
from members of both parties. 

In a recent work of Miss Follett, published under the 
auspices of our associate, Professor Hart, 2 are to be found 

1 Memoir and Letters of Charles Sumner, vol. iii. pp. 151, 152. 

2 The Speaker of the House of Representatives. By M. P. Follett. 
New York, 1896. 



ic 



-I 



78 A MEMOIR OF 

various anecdotes connected with Mr. Winthrop's 
Speakership, which were told by him to the author in 
old age and are more fully recorded in his note-books. I 
will not take up space by repeating them, though it 
may be well to refer in passing to one relating to 
precedence, then, as ever before and since, a burning ques- 
tion in Washington society. Mr. Winthrop was per- 
sonally of opinion that a strict adherence to hierarchical 
order was all very well for State ceremonials, but that a 
considerable degree of latitude in such matters was apt 
to contribute greatly to the pleasure of informal social 
intercourse. John Quincy Adams and Thomas H. Ben- 
ton, however, took him to task for his laxity, main- 
taining that, as third officer of the Nation, he should 
never yield the pas to, or call first upon, any one but the 
President and Vice-President. Mr. Winthrop suggested 
that as the Secretary of State (Buchanan) was nearly 
twenty years his senior, and Chief Justice Taney well- 
nigh old enough to be his grandfather, an exception 
might now and then be made in their favor. " On no 
account," almost shrieked Mr. Adams, who was in one 
of his excited moods ; " Cabinet officers and Judges 
of the Supreme Court are the mere creatures of the 
Executive. We are the Representatives of the People, 
and you, for the time being, our official head. It will 
not become you to forget it." 

Under date of Jan. 17, 1848, he wrote in his diary: 

I am at a loss to know what course to take to repel a 
specific charge of Mr. Giddings which I found, only the other 
day, in a Ohio newspaper which was sent me anonymously, 
but which, I am told, has been repeatedly copied into other 
papers. In the course of a letter of several columns he de- 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 79 

liberately asserts that ' on the morning on which war was 
declared, at a meeting of the Whig members of Congress, 
Mr. Winthrop seized upon the first opportunity to speak in 
favor of voting for the war, and advised the whole party to 
sustain the bill declaring war, which it was expected would 
be presented at the session of that day.' Now I never heard 
of such a meeting before, never attended such a meeting, nor 
made any such speech. I am willing to believe Giddings 
intends to speak the truth, but his intense prejudices have 
led him into some strange hallucination or confusion of 
memory after the lapse of a year and a half. At my request 
a few of my colleagues came this evening to consult with 
me on this subject. There were present Joseph Grinnell, 
Charles Hudson, Daniel P. King, Artemas Hale, and Amos 
Abbott. They all bear me out in contradicting this and 
other assertions of Giddings, but it is thought hardly con- 
sistent with my dignity as Speaker to take any notice of 
them at present. An opportunity may arise hereafter, and 
in the mean time evidence can be taken. 1 

On the 21st of January, 1848, he wrote his friend 
Kennedy, who was engaged on a biographical notice of 
him for the " Whig Review " : — 

One word as to this thirty-day immortality I am to receive 
under your auspices. The Sumner-Giddings fraternity are 
trying hard to convince my Northern and Western friends 
that I am false to Northern principles, a truckler to Southern 
dictation, and a principal and constant supporter of this 

1 Mr. Giddings subsequently quoted E. D. Culver of New York, a 
former member of the House, who said he was present at a caucus on 
the morning of May 11, 1846, and that he "thought" Robert C. Win- 
throp, Washington Hunt, and Samuel F. Vinton made speeches at it. 
In reply, Hunt and Vinton denied having been present, Hunt adding 
that he was then absent from Washington. John W. Houston of Dela- 
ware remembered such a caucus, but stated that it was thinly attended, 
and that he had a distinct recollection that Mr. Winthrop was not 
present. 



H 



80 A MEMOIR OF 

abominable war. Sumner is striking his lyre to this tune 
in the Boston Courier and Giddings has written verbose 
epistles to his constituents on the same subject. Meantime, 
certain Southern Whigs are defending their votes for me by 
letters containing here and there unintentional inaccuracies. 
Holmes, for instance, unaccountably presents me as an anti- 
Wilmot-Proviso man, while Cabell (though his letter is gener- 
ally excellent) has set down one or two matters in a way 
to do a little injustice to my views. The long and short of 
all this is that, as my votes are on record and my speeches 
in print, I am anxious to be presented by you in my real 
character; i. e., as an opponent of the war, as neither false to 
the North nor to the South, but as uniting with that sense 
of the evils of slavery which is common to the Free States, 
that respect for the Constitution and the Union which would 
infringe on no right of the Slave States. Sat verbum. You 
would be greatly edified by some of the newspapers I find in 
my mail. ' This Winthrop,' says a Western Loco-foco print, 
' is the fellow who sold himself to the South last year, by 
voting against the Wilmot Proviso.' ' The Wilmot Proviso,' 
cries a Southern sheet, 'call it not so, but rather the Win- 
throp Proviso, for Mr. Winthrop moved it two years before 
Mr. Wilmot thought of it ! ' 



In spite of his long experience as a presiding officer, 
both as Speaker in the Massachusetts Legislature and 
as Chairman of the Committee of the Whole in Washing- 
ton, his new duties proved somewhat more laborious 
than he had expected, partly owing to the complexity 
and conflict of the Rules and Orders then existing, and 
partly to the election of a Clerk of the House who saw 
fit to remove the experienced assistants accustomed to 
look up precedents at a moment's notice, thereby oblig- 
ing the Speaker to attend to his own duties and look 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 81 

after the clerks besides. What he liked best about his 
office was the opportunity it afforded him for increased 
hospitality. He had hardly been elected before he took 
a house, engaged a French cook, and began to give two 
large dinners a week, with smaller ones as occasion 
served. From boyhood he had been accustomed to meet 
at his father's table the principal persons in New Eng- 
land, together with all distinguished strangers who 
passed through Boston, and it was a genuine pleasure 
to him — a pleasure which never palled — to assemble 
around his own board not merely the celebrities of 
Washington society, but his associates in Congress of 
all shades of opinion. For convenience he kept lists 
of his guests, and the recurrence on them of names like 
Clay, Webster, and Calhoun was a matter of course ; 
bat there is a single entry of a name destined in process 
of time to outshadow all the rest, that of the " lone star 
of Illinois " as he was sometimes called, he being then 
the only Whig in the delegation from that State. Mr. 
Winthrop was not one of those, if any there were, who dis- 
cerned in Abraham Lincoln at that period the promise 
of exceptional fame ; but he liked him personally, find- 
ing him shrewd and kindly, with an air of reserved 
force. The greatest man then in the House, as admitted 
by those who liked him least, was John Quincy Adams, 
with whom Mr. Winthrop's intercourse, in spite of some 
differences of opinion, had been frequent ever since he 
entered Congress. On the 19th of February, 1818, he 
recorded in his diary : — 

Passed part of the evening with Mr. Adams. He was 
particularly kind and cordial, full of reminiscences of his 
early life. 



-h 



82 A MEMOIR OF 

Two days later, the old man, like another Chatham, 
fell on the floor of the House, and, on the evening of the 
24th, died in the Speaker's room in the Capitol. Mr. 
Winthrop's official announcement of his death was short, 
but impressive. I quote a single sentence : — 

Whatever advanced age, long experience, great ability, 
vast learning, accumulated public honors, a spotless private 
character, and a firm religious faith could do to render any 
one an object of interest, respect, and admiration, they had 
done for this distinguished person ; and interest, respect, and 
admiration are but feeble terms to express the feelings with 
which the members of this House and the people of this 
country have long regarded him. 

In a note-book he wrote not long after : — 

There have been, I confess, moments in my life — perhaps 
not a few — when John Quincy Adams has seemed to me the 
most credulous, prejudiced, and opinionated of mortal men. 
As a rule, however, he either endeared himself to me by his 
attractive conversation, or electrified me by his energy and 
eloquence. 1 

The Presidential possibilities of 1848 had long been 
an engrossing topic of conversation. Mr. Winthrop 
was decidedly of opinion that in the existing condition 
of public affairs the Democrats would win an easy vic- 
tory should the Conservative nominee prove to be Clay, 
Webster, or Judge McLean. The only chance for the 
Whigs, in his judgment, was to run an untried man, 
one whose name would excite popular sympathy outside 
of politics. His personal preference was for General 
Scott, with whom he had grown intimate during his 

1 He was of opinion that Massachusetts had not adequately honored 
the memory of Mr. Adams, a statue of whom should, he thought, have 
been made a pendant to that of Webster in front of the State House. 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 83 

residence in Washington, but he realized that the en- 
thusiasm aroused by General Taylor's Mexican cam- 
paign rendered him a safer candidate. With the latter 
his acquaintance was then slight, but he had formed a 
high opinion of his patriotism and unselfishness. Out 
of regard for Mr. Webster, however, he refrained from 
any public expression of his views, and declined in ad- 
vance to be elected a delegate to the Philadelphia Con- 
vention. From time to time he noticed that his own 
name figured as a possible candidate for the Vice-Presi- 
dency on the Taylor ticket, but he considered this idle 
newspaper-gossip until, in the latter part of January, 
John S. Pendleton of Virginia came to him to offer the 
unanimous support of the delegation from that State if 
he would consent to the use of his name. This proposi- 
tion Mr. Winthrop at once declined, on the ground that 
it would be sound policy for the friends of General 
Taylor not to couple him with any particular man at 
the outset, but rather to leave the Vice-Presidency open 
until the last moment for different candidates to hang 
their hopes upon. In giving this advice, he made a 
single exception, expressing the opinion that if Webster 
could then be persuaded to waive his claims and take 
the second place, a Taylor and Webster ticket would 
afford the best assurance of victory. 1 

On the 12th of May, 1848, Mr. Winthrop wrote in 
his diary : — 

Thirty-nine years old to-day ! I have rarely entered on a 
new year with less spirit or in worse health. Spring always 

1 If this arrangement could have been effected, Webster, as it turned 
out, would have had nearly three years in the White House. Mr. Win- 
throp thought him ill advised at this period, and that in grasping at the 
shadow, he missed the substance. 



> 



84 A MEMOIR OF 

brings with it for me a certain degree of debility and depres- 
sion, and this Spring has brought twice its usual load. The 
old elasticity and the old ambition seem to have gone out of 
me, and this at an age when some men are just entering 
public life. My doctor, as usual, is trying tonics, but there 
is a verse in the Psalms which does me more good than a 
hundred nostrums : ' Wait on the Lord ; be of good courage ; 
He will strengthen thy heart ; wait, I say, on the Lord.' 

The corner-stone of the National Monument to 
Washington was laid in the capital, with appropriate 
exercises, on the 4th of July, 1848. 1 The orator of the 
day was to have been John Quincy Adams, after whose 
death Mr. Winthrop was appointed. His address was 
much admired at the time, and is still familiar to readers 
of commemorative literature, though he himself was not 
wholly satisfied with it. 

I was sensible [lie wrote] that I was making a strong im- 
pression, and my voice held out wonderfully ; but there is 
a want of breadth and body to the oration which nobody 
realizes more than the author. The truth is that, what with 
the intense heat and my duties in the Chair, its preparation 
has been a case of invito, Minerva from beginning to end. 

Shortly afterward, he addressed a private letter to 
the Chairman of his Ward and County Committee, ex- 
pressing his earnest wish to retire from the representa- 
tion of Boston at the expiration of his Speakership 
(March 4, 1849) and requesting that some one else 

1 An odd instance of the inaccuracy of modern works of reference is to 
be found in a statement in more than one of them that the illness and 
death of President Taylor followed closely his attendance upon these 
exercises. In point of fact, the President who took part in them was 
James K. Polk, and General Taylor was not within a thousand miles of 
Washington. 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 85 

should be nominated in the autumn. The most urgent 
appeals were made to him to reconsider this decision. 
It was represented to him by Nathan Appleton, and 
other friends whom he had long been in the habit of con- 
sulting, that it was not for the interest of the party to 
make a change when a general election was pending and 
when differences of opinion were certain to arise as to 
his fittest successor. With a good deal of reluctance, 
he consented to submit the matter to the Nominating 
Convention in October, agreeing to run again if, as 
proved to be the case, this should be their urgent and 
unanimous wish, — subject to an understanding that he 
should be at liberty to resign later if he saw fit. 1 On his 
return home after the adjournment of Congress, he pre- 
ferred not to accept the offer of a public dinner, and did 
not think it consistent with his office to take an active 
part in opening the campaign, but he expressed his views 
with clearness and conciseness in a letter declining an 
invitation to address a meeting in New York : — 

The Whigs of the Union [he wrote] can elect General 
Taylor President of the Republic, if they will. They can 
elect nobody else. The only other result they can accomplish 
is the success of General Cass. If any of them see fit to adopt 
the latter of these two alternatives, they may denounce whom 
they please as being no true Whigs ; they will convict no- 
body but themselves. As the fairly selected nominee of the 
National Convention, in which the Whig party, the whole 
Whig party, and nothing but the Whig party, was represented, 
General Taylor is in my judgment entitled to the support of 
all who recognize party organization. As an avowed Whig, 
— none the less likely to be a true Whig, a firm Whig, or a 

1 For correspondence on this subject see Addresses and Speeches of 
Robert C. Winthrop, vol. i. pp. 627-629. 



86 A MEMOIR OF 

wise Whig, because he has confessed himself not to be an 
ultra Whig, —he has a right, as I think, to the support of all 
who have voluntarily united in a Convention which has de- 
clared him its candidate. But, as an honest man of spotless 
character, sterling integrity, strong sense, indomitable courage, 
tried patriotism, and just principles, he has far higher claims 
upon us all. I believe him to be all this, and more than all 
this. We have had some touches of his quality which cannot 
be mistaken. Under him I believe we shall have a peaceful, 
virtuous, patriotic, and Constitutional Administration. And 
if any accident should befall him (which Heaven avert!) 
your own Millard Fillmore will carry out such an administra- 
tion to its legitimate completion. I congratulate you on the 
prospect before us. Nothing throws a cloud or a shadow on 
it but our own momentary dissensions, and these will rapidly 
vanish into thin air. 

The "dissensions" thus alluded to arose from the 
dissatisfaction manifested in different parts of the 
country by friends of Clay and Webster. The attitude 
of those two illustrious statesmen at this juncture was 
a grief to Mr. Winthrop, to whom it seemed greatly 
lacking in magnanimity. They each had undoubted 
reason to be chagrined at the preference accorded to 
a successful soldier ; but from Mr. Winthrop's point of 
view, the ridding of the country of the incubus of a 
Democratic administration was the real duty of the 
hour, and all individual ambitions, however justifiable 
at other times, should have given way to it. As he 
had considered Webster ill advised in the beginning in 
not allowing his name to be associated with that of 
Taylor, so now the disparaging remarks attributed to 
the former concerning the latter seemed even more in- 
judicious. If, instead of finally according a tardy and 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 87 

lukewarm support to Taylor's candidacy, he had advo- 
cated it generously at the outset, he would beyond a 
doubt (so Mr. Winthrop thought) have been offered the 
Secretaryship of State and with it an unrivalled oppor- 
tunity of service to his country, to say nothing of an 
escape from the Senate before the debates on the Com- 
promise. As matters stood, a local schism was threat- 
ened, Mr. Webster's immediate supporters (mostly in and 
about Boston) becoming known as "Webster Whigs," 
while the main body of the party in the State, headed 
by Mr. Lawrence and Mr. Winthrop, were often styled 
" Massachusetts Whigs." 

The Free-Soilers naturally availed themselves of this 
breach, and endeavored to widen it by insinuating that 
some of Mr. Webster's friends had not been loyal to him. 
Party feeling then ran very high, and in moments of 
excitement good men said strange things, one man of 
note asserting on the stump that, more than a year 
before the Philadelphia Convention, he had heard Mr. 
Winthrop, at his own table in Washington, propose a 
toast to General Taylor as the fittest candidate for the 
Presidency. Mr. Winthrop fortunately possessed a list 
of his dinners, and on writing to the other guests on 
the occasion in question, they all denied that anything 
of the sort had taken place ; whereupon the accuser 
admitted that he might have confused the dinner with 
one given by another person. 

Mr. Winthrop made a few speeches while the election 
was pending ; one of them in September, at the Whig 
Convention in Worcester, another at Faneuil Hall in 
November, the night before the general election, when 
he divided the applause with Mr. Choate. They were 



88 A MEMOIR OF 

largely extempore, and finding them inadequately re- 
ported he undertook to write them out for future pub- 
lication, which he never accomplished. Many years 
afterward he learned for the first time that his Wor- 
cester speech had received high encomium from Abraham 
Lincoln, who was among his auditors. 1 In his remarks 
at Faneuil Hall he made no allusion to the fact that he 
was for the fifth time a candidate for the representation 
of Boston, but at the ensuing Congressional election, 
he received a majority of 3,930 over the combined vote 
of his competitors, one of whom was Charles Sumner. 

I insert here a few extracts from private letters writ- 
ten by him after the reassembling of Congress : — 

[Dec. 11, 1848.] I have just read a new falsehood about 
myself, but it is only new in the species, not in the genus. 
The ' Union,' copying from the ' Philadelphia Evening Bul- 
letin,' says I am represented as having made a speech, at the 
supper to Truman Smith in New York, proclaiming what the 
North would do about slavery. Now I was not present at this 
supper, nor did I attend any meeting, deliberative or festive, 
on my way to "Washington, nor have I ever expressed any 
such sentiments. I think I shall stamp this lie publicly, for 
I have so often allowed such things to pass current that 
some people seem to think they can soil me with impunity. 
... As to newspaper suggestions of my going into the 
Cabinet, or to London, the former I should not care for, and 
the latter will end in smoke, as things in London are apt to 
do. The very rumor of such a likelihood would defeat it, 
there are so many conflicting claims. Besides the one you 

1 Mr. Lincoln's own speeches in Massachusetts during this canvass 
have been strangely neglected by his biographers, perhaps because the 
language he indulged in with reference to the Free-Soil party, though 
characteristically humorous, was the reverse of complimentary. 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 89 

mention, I have good reason for thinking that Everett would 
not be indisposed to return to England, and I could not con- 
sent to be brought into competition with one who is not 
merely my personal friend, but my superior in age, in ability, 
and in accomplishments. The chances are that the Adminis- 
tration will think a single slice of so rich a loaf as the London 
mission enough for any man. In any case, however, I wish 
my friends to know that I have never had the smallest under- 
standing with Taylor's immediate supporters that anything 
should be offered me, though I am aware Giddings charges 
that a bargain was made long ago by which old Zack was to 
be President and I Speaker. 

[Dec. 21.] You will have noticed in different papers some 
amusing bits of Cabinet-making, one, in particular, in which 
I figure as Postmaster-General (Heaven forefend ! ) As a 
bit of mosaic it reminded me of the invited guests at 
Webster's table on Tuesday last. ' Mr. Winthrop,' said the 
Godlike J on my arrival, ' be good enough to sit opposite me, 
with General Dix and General Caleb Cushing on your right 
and left. I will take Mr. John Van Buren and Mr. Prescott 
Hall on my right and left, and Mr. Reverdy Johnson and the 
other guests can intersperse themselves on either side.' So 
we sat, true Whigs and mongrel Whigs, Free-Soilers and Cass- 
ites, in a room hardly big enough to breathe in, but the 
unaccountable non-appearance of Caleb seriously impaired 
the variety of the entertainment. We had a good time, how- 
ever, Webster making up for the medley of his company by 
the richness and fulness of his conversation. . . . The solici- 
tations, personal or by letter, of a thousand seekers of minor 
offices have begun to make my life a burden to me. The 
state of things is already worse than after Harrison's election, 
and what it will be by the fourth of March Heaven only 
knows. It is a melancholy exhibition, and the worst feature 

1 Elderly readers may remember that one of Daniel Webster's most 
popular nicknames was " the Godlike Dan." 



t 



90 A MEMOIR OF 

of our political system. By the way. I -was last night the 
guest of honor at a banquet given by citizens of Washington 
to members of the Thirtieth Congress. I will send you my 
remarks in print, though they do not amount to much. 

[Jan. 20, 1849.] I have long felt that the best hope of rid- 
ding this country of slavery, if this great consummation is ever 
to be achieved, lies in clearly establishing the principle that 
emancipation by the Government against the will of slave- 
owners must be accomplished by just compensation, and that 
the national resources must defray the cost. The doctrine 
of Giddings strikes at this whole idea of property to be paid 
for, and the entire South is thus rallied blindly against any- 
thing in the nature of concession. If a pecuniary arrange- 
ment could be effected by which all negroes born after 1876 
could be declared free, another half-century would see the 
evil removed. Begin where you will in the solution of the 
great problem of Abolition (I mean, of course, anywhere but 
in insurrection and revolution) and Compensation must go 
hand-in-hand with Emancipation. It is this view which takes 
away the idea of selfishness from Northern philanthropy. If 
we aco-ee to unite with the South in bearing the burdens and 
defraying the cost of Abolition, we make it a matter of joint 
interest, in regard to which our voices may fairly be heard. 
I fear the day is distant when anything will be done, and 
meantime a spirit of Agitation at one end of the Union, and 
of Dissolution at the other, grows apace. 

[Feb. 11.] A week ago I was confidentially informed, and 
am now at liberty to mention privately to you, that Taylor's 
purpose was to offer me the State Department in case Clayton 
should make up his mind to decline it, he having at the out- 
set some idea of retaining his seat in the Senate. In the 
present state of the country I had rather have had the com- 
pliment than the office, and I am glad Clayton decided to 
accept, though I should have liked it better still if "Webster 
could have had it, which was, I suppose, out of the question. 



ROBERT C. TYTXTHROP. 91 

Furthermore, it lias been intimated to me that if I had a par- 
ticular fancy for the Navy Department, it might 'perhaps' 
be arranged. I replied I had no such fancy. Indeed, with 
my dislike of the Washington climate, it would be full of 
horror to me to be cooped up in a bureau signing all sorts of 
papers connected with naval administration. — a subject about 
which I know little and care less. Moreover, I greatly ques- 
tion the expediency of passing over Lawrence unless he is 
otherwise provided for. He has rendered important service 
to the party and came very close to the nomination for Vice- 
President. I have said repeatedly that he would make a 
good Secretary of the Treasury, and I do not see the force of 
some objections which have been raised to this. 



V. 



The second winter of Mr. Winthrop's Speakership 
ended in a political storm. The condition of things had 
been critical for some time, and on the last night of the 
session the tempest broke out. The House had passed 
territorial bills with an antislavery restriction, but the 
Senate first laid them on the table and then foisted into 
the General Appropriation Bill a provision for territorial 
governments without any such restriction. The House 
non-concurred, and a conference was called for. Toombs 
and Stephens urged Mr. Winthrop to appoint to this 
Committee men who would favor a concurrence with the 
Senate, which Mr. Winthrop positively declined to do, 
and made his appointments according to his own con- 
victions of duty. The night was spent in agitation and 
confusion, in tbe course of which the Speaker was con- 
strained to call Mr. Toombs by name and order him to 



92 A MEMOIR OF 

his seat, — a step taken with much reluctance, as 
the offender, though occasionally wrong-headed, was a 
man of commanding intellect and one for whom Mr. 
Winthrop had a real regard. The clock had been put 
back; and when the sun rose on the morning of Sun- 
day, March 4, 1849, he had been in the chair the 
greater part of twenty hours. In describing what took 
place, Horace Mann wrote : — 

" There were two regular fist-fights in the House and one 
in the Senate. Some members were fiercely exasperated, and 
had the North been as ferocious as the South, or the Whigs 
as violent as the Democrats, it is probable there would have 
been a general melde. But all this depends upon the men. 
I walked round the House a number of times, conversed with 
all the Southern slaveholders whom I knew, and, by introduc- 
tion, with some I had not known, and had not an uncivil word. 
At last, at seven this morning, Mr. Winthrop made an elegant 
farewell address in answer to a vote of thanks, and Ave all 
ran." 1 

This vote of thanks was moved by a Democrat, Ex- 
Governor James McDowell of Virginia, who paid the 
customary acknowledgment, at the close of a Congress, 
to the " able, dignified, and impartial " manner in which 
the Speaker had presided over their deliberations. The 
words were hardly out of his mouth when Andrew 
Johnson of Tennessee moved that the word "impartial" 
be stricken out of the resolution, charging Mr. Win- 
throp with having been unfair to the South, not merely 
in the appointment of committees, but in his habitual 
awards of the floor. Fourteen members supported 

1 Life of Mann, p. 277. 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 93 

Johnson on division, but as Mr. Winthrop was not pres- 
ent and as there was no roll-call, he did not learn pre- 
cisely who they were, but was told they were a curious 
admixture of Democrats, Free-Soilers, and disaffected 
Southern Whigs. Shortly afterward he wrote : — 

Toombs is not likely to forgive what happened, particu- 
larly as he has lashed himself into a sort of fury over the 
idea (which I think he honestly entertains) that Southern 
rights and Southern property are in danger. It will not 
surprise me if he rallies enough followers of the extreme 
type to defeat my re-election next December. Our ma- 
jority (if we have one) will be so narrow that a slight de- 
fection would turn the balance. For myself, I care little. I 
suppose I may say without vanity that I have made some 
figure in the chair, but I could 'hardly hope to increase my 
reputation by presiding for a second term over such a hornet's 
nest as the House has now become. I lament, however, the 
possibility of a Democratic Speaker in the present condition 
of the country. The funny part of the matter is, that if 
Toombs succeeds in pushing me from my stool, Giddings, 
more suo, will at once claim the credit of it and boast to 
his constituents that it was he who killed Cock Robin. 

On the following day it became Mr. Winthrop's offi- 
cial duty to escort to the Inauguration at the Capitol 
both the incoming and retiring Presidents. At the 
former's desire he called for him some time in advance 
in order to explain a few matters of ceremonial, the 
General having modestly mentioned that he had been 
but once inside the Senate-chamber, and then only as a 
spectator in the gallery. This was the first occasion 
when Mr. Winthrop had seen him alone, and he was 
much impressed by his simplicity of character, combined 



94 A MEMOIR OF 

with evidences of earnest, patriotic, resolute purpose. 
lie dwelt with frankness upon his want of familiarity 
with the public men of the country and the great dis- 
advantage this had been to him in the selection of 
his advisers. He added, however, that he had been 
quite a reader of debates in Congress, and that to his 
appreciation of several of Mr. Winthrop's speeches was 
due the wish he had originally formed to have him in 
his Cabinet. In reply, Mr. Winthrop paid a compli- 
ment to Mr. Clayton, but took occasion to express the 
hope that a way might be found to bring Mr. Webster 
into full accord with the Administration. Some days 
later, William W. Seaton, Mayor of Washington, and 
an intimate friend both of the President and himself, 
came to him privately and said : " The General is 
bothered to death by pressure for office, both direct and 
indirect. He would like to offer you the mission to 
London, but Clayton is of opinion that it would be for 
the interest of the party if you could be persuaded to 
stay in Congress, and, in any case, he prefers to keep 
the foreign appointments in abeyance for the present. 
If, however, you will suffer me to go to the General and 
tell him from you that the post would be particularly 
agreeable to you, I think this can be arranged forthwith. 

Otherwise, it may eventually go to or ." 

Mr. Winthrop positively refused to send such a mes- 
sage, on the ground that he had always made it a rule 
of conduct never to ask for anything, and that he was 
very sensitive to imputations of self-seeking. Tempting 
as was the prospect held out, he had grave doubts 
whether it was not his duty to stay at home and devote 
personal attention to his children, of whom, since their 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 95 

mother's death, he had been able to see comparatively 
little. After thinking the whole matter over carefully, 
he sat down and wrote a friendly note to Clayton, 
suggesting that it might relieve the Administration 
from embarrassment if it were distinctly understood 
that he was not a candidate for any office in its gift. 
This done, he returned with a clear conscience to 
Boston, where he occupied himself with an accumula- 
tion of private business and with the preparation of 
several non-political addresses he had promised to de- 
liver, — one, in particular, on the life and public ser- 
vices of his great-grandfather, Governor James Bowdoin, 
for whose character and career he had a profound 
admiration and many of whose papers he had inherited. 
Later in the summer he presided over the Phi Beta 
Kappa dinner at Cambridge, and recruited his health 
by a tour of watering-places, at one of which an event 
occurred which changed the current of his life, and is 
best described by a passage in one of his letters : 



[Sept. 7, 1849.] Have pity on me. I went to Newport 
about four weeks ago free and unshackled. I met there a 
widow with one little boy. I bad known her when she was 
a girl, and had been intimate with her husband, so it was not 
unnatural we should sympathize. Suffice it to say, I returned 
ten daj'S ago a bondman, and to-day it is publicly announced 
that I am going to be married. The worst of it is that I am 
unable to deny it. My only consolation is that the lady — 
to one eye at least in the world — is a very charming person, 
not too young for a man who was made a Doctor of Laws 
day before yesterday, and one of the most thoroughly amiable 
women under the sun. I shall soon send you an invitation 
to a great occasion. Meantime give my best regards to Mrs. 
Kennedy and tell her I have always taken her as the pattern 



S- 



96 A MEMOIR OF 

of my matrimonial needs, and that I hope I have come almost 
up to the sample. Only think of my forgetting the name. 
Laura Welles, formerly Laura Derby, a niece of that beautiful 
Mrs. Richard Derby of the past, whose portrait you may 
remember. One of her sisters married Rev. Ephraim 
Peabody, and a cousin is the second wife of our friend 
Appleton. I preached at Bowdoin College an hour and 
three quarters by the clock. A crowded audience sat 
through it patiently, and some of them were even good 
enough to say I did well. You shall judge for yourself 
when the pamphlet is out. 

The marriage took place on the 15th of October, 
and put new heart into Mr. Winthrop, who was a man 
of domestic tastes, greatly dependent upon a cheer- 
ful home. He forthwith took a larger house in Wash- 
ington, though with little expectation of being re-elected 
Speaker. The contest for that office- lasted nearly three 
weeks, no less than sixty-three separate votes being 
taken, besides many incidental ones on different sub- 
jects, the whole interspersed with much acrimonious 
debate, — Andrew Johnson taking the opportunity to 
renew his attacks upon Mr. Winthrop, and declaring 
that while only fifteen members had actually opposed the 
vote of thanks of the previous March, forty-five others 
had sat quietly in their seats without voting, rather 
than acquit the Speaker of unfairness to the South. 
It is unnecessary to describe all that took place, but, 
in view of the inaccurate or disingenuous accounts 
which have appeared in some works of reference, it is 
desirable to call attention to a few facts. The roll was 
first called (Dec. 3, 1849) with the following result: 
w r hole number of votes cast, 221 ; necessary to a choice, 



ROBERT C. AYIXTHROP. 97 

111; Howell Cobb of Georgia, Democrat, 103; Robert ~f 

C. Winthrop, of Massachusetts, Whig, 96 ; scattering, 22. 
An analysis of the scattering votes shows : Free-Soilers, 
9 ; Independent Northern Democrats (Peck of Vermont, 
Cleveland of Connecticut, Doty of Wisconsin), 3 ; Inde- 
pendent Southern Democrats (Holmes and Woodward 
of South Carolina), 2 ; Independent Northern Whigs 
(Campbell and Crowell, of Ohio), 2 ; Disaffected South- 
ern Whigs (Toombs, Stephens, and Owen, of Georgia, 
Cabell of Florida, Hilliard of Alabama, Morton of Vir- 
ginia), 6. When the twenty-first vote was reached, 
Mr. Cobb's support had greatly fallen off, while Mr. 
Winthrop's had increased to 102, his gradual gain of six 
being due to the arrival in Washington of two belated 
Whigs, to the adhesion of one Free-Soiler (Howe of 
Pennsylvania), and to the wheeling into line of the two 
Independent Northern Whigs above mentioned, and a 
single disaffected Southern Whig (Hilliard). The figure 
102 proved to be Mr. Winthrop's high-water mark, 
which he repeatedly attained, but never exceeded. Not 
long afterward, the Democratic managers thought it 
good policy to drop Cobb for the time being and run a 
Northern Democrat. They concentrated first on Emery 

D. Potter of Ohio, and then on William J. Brown of 
Indiana. The latter was a dark horse who developed 
surprising speed, creeping up on the thirty-ninth vote 
to 109, out of a total of 226. Mr. Winthrop had all 
along offered to retire in favor of some other Whig if 
it would help matters, but his principal supporters had 
hitherto strenuously objected, on the ground that this 
would only make bad worse. At this juncture, how- 
ever, Robert C. Schenck of Ohio and Edward Stanly 

7 



V 



98 A MEMOIR OF 

of North Carolina came to him and said : " "We have 
good reason to suspect Brown of double-dealing, of hav- 
ing secretly pledged himself to both Southern men and 
Free-S oilers. To gain time to expose him, you must 
now resign, and we will make this a pretext to force 
an adjournment," — a plan which was at once carried out. 
The next morning the required evidence was not forth- 
coming, and on the fortieth vote Brown got 112, need- 
ing but two more to elect him. Just then the cat was 
let out of the bag, in the shape of a letter from Brown 
agreeing to appoint committees satisfactory to the Free- 
Soilers, in return for their eventual support. This dis- 
covery caused much excitement, and a revulsion of 
feeling. Had a vote then been taken, and had Mr. 
Winthrop been still the Whig candidate, it is probable 
that he would have been chosen. As it was, the House 
adjourned, and the next day the Democrats precipitated 
an angry debate. For some time after, both parties 
scattered their votes, ultimately reverting to the ori- 
ginal nominees. A variety of compromises were ad- 
vocated, among others the amusing one that Mr. 
Winthrop and Mr. Cobb should draw lots for the 
Speakership ; but in the end it was agreed that, in- 
stead of a majority, a plurality should determine. 
Before this new rule went into operation, Stanly of 
North Carolina, Conrad of Louisiana, and Houston of 
Delaware labored hard with the five recalcitrant 
Southern Whigs, pointing out to Toombs and Stephens 
in particular that Taylor, a Southern man and a slave- 
owner, had been their original choice for President, and 
that, by conniving at a Democratic Speaker, they were 
giving the administration a set-back at the outset, 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 99 

besides inflicting a profound and perhaps irreparable 
injury upon the Whig party. There was some little 
wavering, but the iron will of Toombs (much the ablest 
of the phalanx) held fast his associates, though, as the 
result showed, if even four of them could have been 
won back to their allegiance, Mr. Winthrop would have 
been elected. 1 The sixty-third and final vote (Dec. 22, 
1849) was as follows : Cobb, 102 ; Winthrop, 99 ; scat- 
tering, 20 ; this scattering vote consisting of nine Free- 
Soilers, two Independent Northern Democrats, two 
Independent Southern Democrats, and the five dis- 
affected Southern Whigs just alluded to. 2 

In view of all this, it is a little surprising that in the 
" History of the Rebellion," published by Mr. Gidclings 
in 1864, and in other equally trustworthy works of 
reference, the statement should be made that Mr. 
Winthrop owed his defeat to " his devotion to the in- 
terests of slavery." That such an impression, however, 
was widely current at the time in certain circles would 
seem established by the following paragraph from a 
leading abolition newspaper : — 

" That lickspittle of slavery, Robert C. Winthrop — a 
doughface of showy but mediocre ability, the self-satisfied and 
self-sufficient agent of the wealth of Boston — has fallen 
under the wheels of the bright car of Liberty. Thanks be 
to Heaven for this victory, small as it is ! " 

: In justice to these four gentlemen, it should be stated that their 
opposition was entirely courteous, and they expressed regret that they 
could not conscientiously vote for one whom they personally liked. 

2 It should be added that neither in this, nor in many of the preceding 
votes, did either party poll its full strength, there being several pairs. 
Pairs, however, do not affect a result. In this last vote Mr. Winthrop 
lost the support of the one Free-Soiler who had hitherto voted for him 
(Howe), but the gap was made good by Tuck of New Hampshire, who 
then voted for him for the first time. 



100 A MEMOIR OF 

In an eloquent speech in Congress on the loth of 
December (listened to by the writer of this memoir), 
Mr. Toombs had said : — 

" I do not act with them [the Whigs] because the events 
of the past, the present, and the future force the conviction 
on my mind that the interests of my section of the Union 
are in danger, and I am therefore unwilling to surrender 
the great power of the Speaker's chair without obtaining 
security for the future." 

In a subsequent letter of explanation to his constitu- 
ents he went more into particulars, as follows : — 

" When Congress met, in December, I found there was a 
strong and nearly unanimous disposition on the part of 
Northern Whig members to interpolate the old Whig creed 
with Free-Soil opinions. The same disposition strongly 
manifested itself also among Northern Democrats, though 
not to the same extent. Four years' experience in Congress 
had taught me the importance of the organization of the 
House to the success or defeat of public measures. After a 
free, full, and unsatisfactory conference in caucus with the 
Northern Whigs, I determined not to co-operate with them 
in the election of Speaker, without some security upon the 
slavery question. I found them, with but few exceptions, 
pledged and determined to engraft the Wilmot Proviso upon 
Territorial bills for the government of New Mexico and 
Utah, and to abolish slavery in the district of Columbia. A 
resolution submitted by me to the caucus in opposition to 
the passage of any such laws was promptly rejected, and I, 
together with those who acted with me, as promptly with- 
drew from the caucus and resisted, by all means in our 
power, the election of its nominee, Mr. Winthrop. The 
struggle for the Speakership resulted in the election of a 
representative from our own State, whose able and efficient 
administration of its duties has thus far been highly honor- 
able and beneficial." 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 101 

Aside from his gratitude to the political friends who 
had stood by hirn so manfully in this contest, Mr. Win- 
throp was pleased that Horace Mann, between whose 
opinions and his own there was something of a gulf, 
should not only have steadily voted for him from first 
to last, but have endeavored (so he was informed) to 
persuade others to do so. Many years later he read 
with interest the following extracts from Mann's let- 
ters on this subject : — 

[Dec. 22. 1849.] " I have voted for Mr. Winthrop and in 
that way have fulfilled the hopes of the Whigs. He was 
their first choice ; he is only my second or third : yet, as he 
is the best man we could possibly elect, I have supported 
him. Just so much undeserved credit as I get from the 
"Whigs, just so much undeserved censure I shall get from the 
Free-S oilers." 

[Dec. 23.] " Howell Cobb is Speaker, one of the fiercest, 
sternest, strongest, proslavery men in all the South. . . . 
And by whom was he allowed to be elevated to this important 
post ? By the Free-Soilers, who, at any time during the last 
three weeks, might have prevented it, and who permitted it 
last nisfht when the fact stared them full in the face. Mr. 
"Winthrop was not unexceptionable, it is true; but what a 
vast difference between him and an avowed champion of 
slavery, with all the South at his back to force him on, and 
at his ear to minister counsel ! How strange that love of a 
good thing which destroys it! Now we shall have pro- 
slavery committees. All the power and patronage of the 
Speaker, and it is great, will be on the wrong side ; and this 
has been permitted by those who clamor most against all 
forbearance toward slavery, when by a breath they might 
have prevented it." 1 

It is not essential to recount the part taken in debate 

i Life of Mann, pp. 283-284. 



y 



i 



102 A MEMOIR OF 

by Mr. Winthrop for a month or two after he returned 
to the floor. It is all to be found in the " Congressional 
Globe." His first speech of real importance was de- 
livered on the 21st of February, 1850, and was entitled 
Personal Vindication. While he continued to be a 
candidate for Speaker, he had preferred not to be 
drawn into any discussion of his conduct ; but he had 
always intended to take some opportunity to defend 
himself, and an occasion was furnished by a fresh 
attack, this time from Joseph A. Root of Ohio (a 
former Whig, then an active Free-Soiler), who accused 
Mr. Winthrop and others of having "skulked" a par- 
ticular vote. 1 In replying to Mr. Root he was able to 
deal with previous assailants and at some length. " I 
have no expectation," he more than once remarked in 
his old age, " that my political career will excite the 
smallest interest in the distant future, but I should be 
glad if any one curious in such matters would turn to 
this particular speech and read it from beginning to 
end." I give a few extracts to convey some idea of its 
flavor : — 

It appears to have been the studious policy of a few 
members of the House to drag me into the debate, whether 
I would or no. Not satisfied with having accomplished my 
defeat as a candidate for re-election to the Speaker's chair, 
they have made it their special business to provoke and 
taunt me by unworthy reflections upon my political and 
official conduct ; and more than one of them has not scrupled 
to assail me with the coarsest and most unwarrantable per- 
sonalities. It is my purpose, sir, at this moment to notice some 

1 The " Globe" has it " dodged," but Mr. Winthrop, who was listen- 
ing to a debate in the Senate at the time, was informed that the word 
really used was " skulked." 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 103 

of these unmannerly assaults ; and no one will be surprised, 
I think, if I should be found doing so in no very mincing or 
measured terms. Hardly had I reached the capital before I 
found myself held up, at the length of three or four columns, 
in the Democratic organ of this city, as a desperate Aboli- 
tionist. The Abolition papers, in reply, exhibited me at equal 
length, as indeed they had often done before, as a rank pro- 
slavery man. The honorable member from Tennessee [Mr. 
Andrew Johnson] coming next to the onslaught, and doing 
me the favor to rehearse before my face a siDeech which he 
had delivered behind my back at the last session, arraigned 
me in the most ferocious terms as having prostituted the pre- 
rogatives of the Chair to sectional purposes, and as having 
framed all my committees in a manner and with a view to 
do injustice to the South. The honorable member from 
Ohio [Mr. Gidclings], following him, after a due delay, de- 
nounced me with equal violence as having packed the most 
important of these committees for the purpose of betraying 
the North. The one proclaimed me to be the very author 
and originator of the Wilmot Proviso. The other reproached 
me as being a downright, or at best, a disguised enemy to 
that proviso. The one exclaimed, as the very climax of his 
condemnation, ' I would sooner vote for Joshua R. Giddings 
himself than for Robert C. Winthrop.' The other responded 
with an equally indignant emphasis, ' I would sooner vote 
for Howell Cobb than for Robert C. Winthrop, — he cannot 
do worse, he may do better.' 

The honorable members from Tennessee and Ohio have 
not been the only contributors to this most amiable, consist- 
ent, and harmonious testimony in regard to my public conduct 
and character. An honorable colleague from Massachusetts 
[Mr. Allen] has cast in his mite also, both by prompting 
others at his elbow, and by the manlier method of direct 
accusation. He, too, has charged me with having arranged 
certain committees with the deliberate purpose of preventing 
the action which Northern men demanded. And more re- 



104 A MEMOIR OF 

cently, again, an honorable member from Virginia [Mr. 
Morton] in a speech which, I take pleasure in saying, was 
characterized by entire courtesy, if not by entire justice, has 
told the House and his constituents that he voted against me 
for Speaker because he believed me to be in favor of the 
Wilmot Proviso ; because he believed me to be in favor of 
the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia; and 
because my name was found in a minority of forty-five 
against the admission of Florida as a slave State. 

If my name were a little less humble than I feel it this day 
to be, — if I were not conscious how small a claim it has to 
be classed among the great names, even of our own age and 
country, much more of the world, — I should be tempted 
to console myself under these conflicting accusations with 
those noble lines of Milton which, as it is, I cannot but 
remember : — 

4 Fame, if not double-faced, is double-mouthed, 
And with contrary blast proclaims most deeds; 
On both his wings, one black, the other white, 
Bears greatest names in his wild aery flight.' 

. . . Sir, when I was first a candidate for Congress, now 
some ten winters gone, I told the Abolitionists of my district, 
in reply to their interrogatories, that, while I agreed with 
them in most of their abstract principles, and was ready to 
carry them out in any just, practicable, and constitutional 
manner, yet, if I were elected to this House, I should not 
regard it as any peculiar part of my duty to agitate the sub- 
ject of slavery. I have adhered to that declaration. I have 
been no agitator. I have sympathized with no fanatics. I 
have defended the rights and interests and principles of the 
North, to the best of my ability, wherever and whenever I 
have found them assailed ; but I have enlisted in no crusade 
upon the institutions of the South. I have eschewed and 
abhorred ultraism at both ends of the Union. ' A plague o' 
both your houses ' has been my constant ejaculation ; and it 
is altogether natural, therefore, that both their houses should 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 105 

cry a plague on me ! I would not have it otherwise. I 
covet their opposition. I dote on their dislike. I desire no 
other testimony to the general propriety of my own course 
than their reproaches. I thank my God that he has endowed 
me, if with no other gifts, with a spirit of moderation, which 
incapacitates me for giving satisfaction to ultraists anywhere 
and on any subject. If they were to speak well of me, I 
should be compelled to exclaim, like one of old, ' What bad 
thing have I done, that such men praise me ? ' . . . 

The honorable member [Mr. Root], in the course of a 
speech in which he has misrepresented and assailed at least 
one-half of the Northern members of this House, has told us 
that he was a member of 'the reviled Free-Soil sect.' Good 
heavens, sir, if they are the reviled, who are the revilers, and 
what must they be? Never, in the whole history of our 
country, — never, since the existence of political parties any- 
where, — has there been a party which, under the pretext of 
philanthropy, has so revelled and luxuriated in malice, 
hatred, and uncharitableness — in vituperation, calumny, and 
slander — as this 'reviled Free-Soil sect.' I speak of their 
principal leaders and organs, as I know them in my own part 
of the country, and not of the great mass of their followers, 
there and elsewhere, who, I doubt not, are led along by 
honest impulses, and many of whom, I as little doubt, are 
disgusted with the music of their own trumpeters. Never, 
sir, I repeat, has there been witnessed in this country, or on 
the face of the globe, such an audacity of false statement 
and false accusation as that with which some of their presses 
have teemed. Never have there been baser stabs at char- 
acter than those with which some of their speeches have 
reeked ! I need not say that I have had my full share, and 
more than my full share, of their misrepresentation and 
abuse. I bear no special malice towards members of this 
House who deal with me in this style, because I know that, 
after all, they are but the instruments and mouth-pieces of 
others afar off. There is a little nest of vipers, sir, in my 



106 A MEMOIR OF 

own immediate district and its vicinity, who have been biting 
a file for three or four years past, and who, having fairly 
used up their own teeth, have evidently enlisted in their 
service the fresher fangs of some honorable members of this 
House. ' Odisse quern Icederis.' Conscious that they have 
wronged me, they now hate me ; and having been thoroughly 
put down at home, they have turned prompters and pan- 
derers to assaults upon me here. . . . 

Sir, I have done with these personalities. They have not 
been of my seeking. They are unnatural and revolting to 
my disposition. I am entirely new to this style of debate. 
During a ten years' occupancy of a seat in this House, I have 
never before had occasion to resort to it. But I could no 
longer submit in silence to such gross and groundless asser- 
tions. Gentlemen may vote against me whenever they 
please. There is no office in the gift of the House, of the 
people, or of the President, which I covet, or for which I 
would quarrel with any one for not giving me his support. 
But no man shall slander me with impunity. No man shall 
pervert and misrepresent my words and acts, and falsify the 
record of my public career, without exposure. That career 
has been one of humble pretension, and presents no claim of 
distinguished service of any sort. But such as it is, I am 
willingf that it should be investigated. Examine the record. 
There may be votes upon it which require explanation ; votes 
about which honest men may differ; votes as to which I 
may have doubted at the time, and may still doubt. But 
examine the record fairly and candidly ; nothing extenuate, 
nor set down aught in malice ; and you will find that I have 
neither been false to the North nor to the South, to the East 
nor to the West. You will find that while I have been true 
to my constituents, I have been true, also, to the Constitu- 
tion and the Union. This, at least, I know, sir, — my con- 
science this day bearing me witness, — that I have been true 
to myself, to my own honest judgment, to my own clear 
convictions of right, of duty, and of patriotism. 



ROBERT C. WTNTHROP. 107 

This speech, like most of its predecessors, was circu- 
lated as a pamphlet at the time, but when, several years 
later, it was included in a volume for permanent refer- 
ence, Mr. Winthrop appended the following foot-note to 
the sentence referring to certain persons living in and 
near his Congressional district : — 

For this application of the old fable of Tlie Viper and the 
File, as well as for some of the other sharpnesses and severi- 
ties of this speech (which is here given precisely as it was 
delivered and published at the time), the plea of the old 
Roman Fabulist may be employed : — 

' Excedit animus quern proposuit terminum ; 
Sed difficulter continetur spiritus, 
Iutegritatis qui sincerse conscius 
A noxiorum premitur insolentiis.' 

What Von Hoist calls " the well-known disreputable 
practice of American politicians," in materially revising 
speeches after delivery, — a practice sanctioned by emi- 
nent examples, — was to him objectionable. If subse- 
quent events now and then modified in some degree an 
opinion he had expressed of men or things, he always 
preferred to let the record stand, rather than allow 
room for the imputation that he had suppressed or 
altered anything to suit any change of political circum- 
stances or of public sentiment. In reproducing at this 
late day a few of the " sharpnesses and severities ' : 
above alluded to, I do so with no disposition to revive 
unpleasant memories, — still less to give offence, — but 
only because, in my judgment, a biography of a public 
man is of little value unless it shows clearly how he 
felt at critical periods, — especially at moments when he 
believed himself deeply wronged, — and tins is best 



108 A MEMOIR OF 

done by using the words actually uttered by hhn at 
the time. Setting aside the matter of this speech, the 
manner of it is described with some minuteness in the 
following passages from a letter to the Boston " Courier," 
dated Washington, Feb. 22, 1850, written by James S. 
Pike, then a well-known newspaper writer, afterward 
minister to the Netherlands : — 

" I listened to Mr. Winthrop, in a set speech, yesterday, for 
the first time. It was pronounced to be one of his best, and 
it was certainly a speech of uncommon merit, commanding 
the close attention of the House. ... He declaimed with 
great animation in a highly finished style of elocution. His 
remarks were wire-woven. No broken threads or ravelled 
edges marred any portion. He has this great advantage as 
a speaker. His mind is eminently methodical, his recollec- 
. tive faculties are strong, active, and in constant play, at the 
same time that he is in the full swing of extempore composi- 
tion. Such faculties are invaluable to a public speaker. 
They are the flying columns, the mounted forces, of his 
mental battalions. The heavy artillery of the intellect may 
open breaches, and even break the line of the enemy, but the 
light troops are essential to make clean work with the par- 
tially discomfited foe. Mr. Winthrop illustrated the great 
value of these subordinate forces on this occasion, in his 
apt running fire of allusion and quotation. His memory 
played the tender to his understanding, and handed him up 
grape-shot and canister, which he threw into his adversaries' 
camp with great effect, in the intervals of his broadside 
discharges. . . . The methodical character of Mr. Winthrop's 
mind enables him to avoid all confusion or transposition in 
the treatment of his topics of debate. He neither runs 
before, nor lags behind, the proper current of his speech. 
He not only says just what he designs to say, but he says it 
just where and when he intends to say it; moreover, he says 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 109 

it in the manner designed. His thoughts are run in a mould, 
and his expressions daguerreotyped for the hearer. They are 
used like the pieces of a dissected map, and when his work 
is done, you see that every piece is put in its proper place 
and that the map is harmoniously and accurately complete. 
These distinguishing characteristics of Mr. Winthrop's mind, 
added to strong powers of intellect, great coolness and self- 
possession, unusual gifts of language, a chaste elocution, 
sufficient force and animation, with an accomplished and 
dignified manner, render him a pleasing, an effective, and a 
reliable debater. Notwithstanding the great amount and 
variety of talent in the House of Representatives, I do not 
know to whom we are to look in that body as his superior." 



VI. 



It was a great regret to Mr. Winthrop that Mr. Clay, 
on his return to the Senate after some years' absence, 
instead of proposing a compromise measure of his own, 
should not have been willing to lend his powerful and 
pre-eminent influence in aid of President Taylor's 
scheme of adjustment, which, though jiot the plan of 
all others which Mr. Winthrop would have preferred, 
seemed to him both practical and practicable, calcu- 
lated to allay Southern sensibilities while sufficiently 
vindicating Northern principles, and affording the 
surest hope of the maintenance of domestic peace and 
the preservation of the Union. In various quarters 
a disposition was manifested to thwart General Taylor's 
views and embarrass his administration, to the great 
chagrin of some of his staunch friends, among whom 
was Edward Stanly of North Carolina, already alluded 



110 A MEMOIR OF 

to as one of the leading members of the House, who 
came to Mr. Winthrop shortly after Mr. Clay had 
introduced his celebrated Resolutions, and said sub- 
stantially as follows : — 

" I am very anxious Webster should know that if he can 
see his way clear to indorse the plan of the Administration, 
Taylor's Southern supporters are prepared to do their best to 
make him the next President. We pressed Taylor two years 
ago merely because it seemed the best chance of ousting the 
Democrats, but he has no idea of running again, and Clay 
is too old to be considered, though he cannot be made to 
realize it. The extravagancies of men like Toombs and 
Stephens threaten to wreck the party. We are ready to 
support Webster on a moderate platform." 

This message was confidentially communicated to 
Mr. Webster by Mr. Winthrop, when a long conver- 
sation ensued, Mr. Webster stating that he had not 
pledged himself to sustain Clay's Resolutions, but was 
revolving the subject in his mind, that he was unable 
to see the necessity for raising any question over the 
restriction of slavery by attempting to organize Terri- 
torial governments in New Mexico and Utah, and that 
he thought well of the general drift of the President's 
policy. " In short," he finally added, " I am substan- 
tially with the President, and you can tell Mr. Stanly 
so." * When, therefore, at the close of his speech of 

1 It is interesting to compare this anecdote with the following ex- 
tract from the accredited biography of Webster : " With the exception 
of the interview between Mr. Clay and Mr. Webster in January, I am not 
aware that any one sought to ascertain what course the latter intended 
to pursue in regard to the pending sectional controversy- There is no 
evidence whatever among his private papers which would warrant the 
belief that he was consulted or approached by any person in public life 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. Ill 

February 21, 1850, Mr. Winthrop alluded with appro- 
bation to General Taylor's scheme of adjustment, 
stating that he should take some early opportunity 
of developing his views thereon, he was under the 
impression that Mr. Webster was in general accord 
with him, and he was confirmed in this idea when 
the latter called at his house the next morning and left 
a message of congratulation. The day but one after, 
Mr. Winthrop was summoned to Boston by the danger- 
ous illness of a near relative, and did not get back to 
Washington till nearly a fortnight later. What fol- 
lowed is best described by the following extracts from 
his notes : * — 

The evening of my return (March 6) I pulled Mr. Web- 
ster's door-bell, 2 thinking he might be glad to see some one 
fresh from Boston before making his speech the next day. 
His servant said he was very busy, but added that he knew 
he would see me, and insisted upon showing me up to his 
study. I found him in the last agonies of preparation, and 
in the act of dictating passages to his son Fletcher. I apol- 

with suggestions of a political character, nor did I ever hear of such an 
occurrence having taken place. ... As early as December, 1849, he 
learned from President Taylor and the members of his Administration 
what convinced him that a dangerous policy was likely to be pursued by 
the Executive, and that a different and more comprehensive plan of 
general pacification must be pursued." Life of Daniel Webster, by 
G. T. Curtis, vol. ii. p. 402, n. 

1 The essential facts contained in these notes were embodied in a 
paper prepared by Mr. Winthrop soon after Mr. Webster's death, and 
privately printed by him in 1872. The pamphlet was entitled " A 
Chapter of Autobiography," but as it was intended only for its author's 
convenient reference and to be shown to a few intimate friends, but six 
copies were stricken off, and it is now extremely rare. 

2 Mr. Webster and Mr. Winthrop lived near one another, the former 
in Louisiana Avenue, the latter in C. Street, in a house subsequently 
associated with Vice-President King. 



112 A MEMOIR OF 

ogized for disturbing him and was making off, when he 
called out, ' What say our friends in Boston ? ' I replied that 
I thought them satisfied with the President's policy and not 
disposed to press matters to a dangerous pass upon the 
Wilmot Proviso. He then said, ' I have not told a human 
being what I am going to say to-morrow, but as you are here 
at the last moment, I will say to you that I don't mean to 
have anything to do with the proviso.' It was not a pro- 
pitious time to ask questions or to make suggestions, and 
after a little talk with Mrs. Webster in the drawing-room, 
I left the house. The next day I listened to the speech and 
immediately after its conclusion went home to dinner. 
Before I had risen from the table, Vinton appeared. ' Did 
you hear that speech,' said he, ' and what do you think of 
it?' I replied that we generally thought alike in such 
matters. He was a good deal moved and exclaimed, ' If that 
speech goes to the country just as it was spoken, without 
qualification or explanation, it will do infinite mischief, and 
overturn every Whig State north of the Potomac. We can- 
not stand it in Ohio. They will not stand it in New York, 
and even he cannot make it go down in Massachusetts. 
It is not so much what he has said as his way of saying it, 
and the things he has omitted. In the abstract, it is a grand 
speech and a patriotic one, but he will be understood as going 
farther than he really intends. The Whig party can stand 
upon General Taylor's policy ; upon any other, it must fall. 
Pray go and beg him to revise certain passages.' I replied 
that while I regretted the speech as much as he did, I 
doubted the expediency of remonstrating verbally with 
Webster when he was in the full flush of a triumphant 
effort, surrounded, as he inevitably would be, by admirers 
who had come to congratulate him. I thought it wiser to 
put our views on paper, as I felt sure that a letter bearing 
our joint names would be considered by him before he went 
to bed. 'If, however,' I added, 'you think he should be 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 113 

seen at once, you are the man to go. You are nearer his 
age, you have served him at a pinch, and he cannot afford 
to disregard the voice of Ohio.' On reflection, we agreed 
to concoct a letter, which was in my handwriting, though 
partly dictated by Vinton. The next afternoon Webster 
called and sat half an hour with me. He said he was 
grateful to us for the feelings which prompted our note, 
which had reached him too late ; that, owing to his being 
greatly exhausted, he had gone to bed at an unusually early 
hour, having handed his notes to reporters in their original 
shape ; but that he had been hard at work all the morning 
on a revision, in which he had done something to avoid 
misconstruction, and soften things which might grate upon 
Northern feelings ; that he had inserted one or two passages 
which had been omitted in the huny of delivery, one in par- 
ticular relating to the imprisonment of Free Colored Seamen. 
As to the President's plan, he said that he had omitted all 
allusion to it for want of time, and with a view of making 
it the subject of a distinct speech hereafter; that he had 
thought of writing to the President to explain this. ' Why 
not go up to the White House and tell him so,' I replied ; 
' it is his reception night and I will call for you with my 
carriage.' He said he was too tired, but would take it as a 
great favor if I would say from him to the President, with 
his respectful compliments, that, in order to finish his speech 
in one day, he had omitted a number of things he desired to 
have said, particularly a tribute he would gladly have paid 
to the President's patriotic policy, — a policy which it was 
his purpose to discuss and advocate in the Senate. We then 
walked out together for a short distance. As we parted, he 
repeated, 'I am in favor of supporting General Taylor's 
plan, unless he himself should hereafter see cause for modi- 
fying his views so far as to recommend the organization of 
a Territorial Government for New Mexico.' A few hours 
later, I told all this to the President, who said he was a little 

8 



114 A MEMOIR OF 

surprised, on reading a report of the speech in a morning 
paper, not to find in it a word about the Administration or 
its policy, but that he should be very glad of Mr. Webster's 
support whenever he saw fit to give it. . . . 

Some time afterward (I cannot recall the exact date) I 
called on Webster one afternoon to express my indignation 
at the torrent of abuse and misrepresentation which had been 
poured out upon him from Northern presses and Northern 
pulpits, and I took occasion to add that while, as he knew, 
I was not fully in accord with the speech, I had exerted 
myself, wherever and whenever I was able, to restrain any- 
thing of the nature of unfriendly criticism or unjust insinua- 
tion. He replied, ' There is one service you can still do me. 
I would give ingots of gold — ingots of gold — for a suitable 
and satisfactory motto to a new and handsome edition of that 
speech which I have in the press. I should prefer a Latin 
sentence, but have looked through Cicero in vain. There is 
a verse in one of Milton's Latin poems which comes near 
what I want, but I cannot quite make it fay. You are 
strong in classical quotation, and though you may not wholly 
approve the speech, you ought to help me.' I said I would 
go home and try. I vaguely remembered some excerpts from 
Livy which I had made twenty years before in a copy-book 
I had recently brought to Washington for another purpose, 
and I had an idea one of them might answer. As soon as 
I found it I sent it round to him with the suggestion that, 
instead of using the entire extract, the three words vera pro 
gratis would be effective. Within ten minutes came back 
the hasty line, 'Just the thing, D. W.' I had expected one 
day to use this quotation myself, but it was entirely at his 
service, and was so generally liked that he had it engraved 
on his private seal. I once said to him in a laughing way 
that, if I survived him, I was entitled to that seal, and in 
November of the same year he sent me, with a kind note, a 
massive seal-ring, inscribed ' Vera pro gratis ' on the stone, 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 115 

and on the ring itself ' Daniel Webster to R. C. Winthrop, 
1850.' i 

On the 31st of March died Calhoun, for whom Mr. 
Winthrop had much admiration and whom he always 
found charming in social intercourse, however much he 
might deplore his political views. At the request of 
the South Carolina delegation he paid a brief tribute 
to him in the House, from which I extract the follow- 
ing passage : — 

I have been told by more than one adventurous navigator 
that it was worth all the privations and perils of a protracted 
voyage beyond the line to obtain even a passing view of the 
Southern Cross, — that great constellation of the Southern 
hemisphere. We can imagine, then, what would be the 
emotions of those who have always enjoyed the light of that 
magnificent luminary, and who have taken their daily and 
their nightly direction from its refulgent rays, if it were 
suddenly blotted out from the sky. Such I can conceive to 
be the emotions at this hour of not a few of the honored 
friends and associates whom I see around me. Indeed, no 
one who has been ever so distant an observer of the course of 
public affairs for a quarter of a century pajst, can fail to 
realize that a star of the first magnitude has been struck from 
our political firmament. Let us hope that it has only been 
transferred to a higher and purer sphere, where it may shine 
with undimmed brilliancy forever. . . . 

The mere length and variety of his public services in 
almost every branch of the National Government, running 
through a continuous period of almost forty years, — as 

1 Mr. Winthrop kept this ring in a little box with another ring, given 
him by Mrs. John Quincy Adams after her husband's death and contain- 
ing the latter's hair. He valued both so much that he directed they 
should be preserved as heirlooms in his family. 




116 A MEMOIR OF 

a member of this House, as Secretary of War, as Vice- 
President of the United States, as Secretary of State, and as 
a Senator from his own adored and adoring South Carolina, 
— would alone have secured him a conspicuous and perma- 
nent place upon our public records. But he has left better 
titles to remembrance than any which mere office can bestow. 
There was an unsullied purity in his private life ; there was 
an inflexible integrity in his public conduct; there was an 
indescribable fascination in his familiar conversation ; 
there was a. condensed energy in his formal discourse ; there 
was a quickness of perception, a vigor of deduction, a direct- 
ness and a devotedness of purpose, in all that he said, or wrote, 
or did ; there was a Roman dignity in his whole Senatorial 
deportment, which together made up a character which cannot 
fail to be contemplated and admired to the latest posterity. 1 

It was not until the 8th of May, 1850, that Mr. 
Winthrop succeeded in getting the floor for an hour's 
speech on the whole subject of the compromise, entitling 
it the Admission of California and the Adjustment of 
the Slavery Question. His object was, while standing 
fast to his own views previously adopted and expressed, 
to narrow, as far as possible, the division between Mr. 
Webster and the Massachusetts Whigs, and to present 
a conciliatory platform for their reunion. After allud- 
ing to an old Swiss patriot — of whom he had recently 
read an account — who, when the confederated Cantons 

1 The previous morning, after breakfast, Mr. Winthrop and I walked 
up Capitol Hill to Mr. Calhoun's lodgings and stood beside his coffin, in 
which he was full as striking a figure as he had ever been in his seat in 
the Senate. There was no one present but a colored servant, and the 
scene was severely simple, but never to be forgotten. As we turned 
away, Mr. Winthrop remarked, " If there are any antislavery newspaper 
correspondents about at this early hour, our errand will be considered 
fresh evidence of my apostasy to Freedom. But here was a truly great 
man, if there ever was one." 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 117 

had become so embittered against each other by a long 
succession of mutual criminations that a dissolution of 
the confederacy was threatened, had, by his prudence, his 
patriotism, and his eloquence, brought back his distracted 
country from the verge of ruin, he went on to say : — 

Sir, there is no sacrifice of personal opinion, of pride of 
consistency, of local regard, of official position, of present 
havings or of future hopes, which I would not willingty make 
to play such a part as this. Perhaps it may be said that it 
has been played already. Perhaps it may be said that a 
voice, or voices, have already been heard in the other end of 
the Capitol, if not in this, which have stilled the angry storm 
of fraternal discord and given us the grateful assurance that 
all our controversies shall be peacefully settled. At any rate, 
sir, whether this be so or not, I am. but too sensible that it is 
not given to me, in this hour, to attempt such a character. 
And let me add, that there is one sacrifice which I could 
never make, even for all the glory which might result from 
the successful performance of so exalted a service. I mean, 
the sacrifice of my own deliberately adopted and honestly 
cherished principles. These I must avow, to-day and always. 
These I must stand to, here and everywhere. Under all cir- 
cumstances, in all events, I must follow the lead of my own 
conscientious convictions of right and duty. . . . 

Still less, sir, have I sought the floor for the purpose of 
entering into fresh controversy with anybody in this House 
or elsewhere. Not even the gratuitous imputations, the 
second-hand perversions, and stale sarcasms of the honorable 
member from Connecticut a few days ago can tempt me to 
employ another hour of this session in the mere cut and 
thrust of personal encounter. I pass from that honorable 
member with the single remark, that it required more than 
all his vehement and turgid declamation against others, who, 
as he suggested, were shaping their course with a view to 
some official promotion or reward, to make me, or, as I think, 



118 A MEMOIR OF 

to make this House forget, that the term of one of his own 
Connecticut Senators was soon about to expire, that the 
Connecticut Legislature was just about to assemble, and 
that the honorable member himself was well understood to 
be a prominent candidate for the vacancy. And I shall be 
equally brief with the distinguished member from Penn- 
sylvania, who honored me with another shaft from the self- 
same quiver on Friday last. As I heard him pouring forth 
so bitter an invective, so pitiless a philippic, against Southern 
arrogance and Northern recreancy, and as I observed the 
sleek complacency with which he seemed to congratulate 
himself that he alone had been proof against all the seduc- 
tions of patronage and all the blandishments of power, I 
could not help remembering that his name was an historical 
name more than a century ago, and the lines in which a 
celebrated poet embalmed it for immortality came unbidden 
to my lips : — 

' Shall parts so various aim at nothing new ? 
He '11 shine a Tully and a Wilmot too ! ' 

Mr. Winthrop then proceeded to explain the course 
hitherto taken by him with reference to the restriction 
of slavery in the Territories, referring more particularly 
to his action from 1845 to 1847, and reading extracts 
from speeches already alluded to in this memoir. 

I hold now [said he], as I did three years ago, that it is 
entirely constitutional for Congress to apply the principles 
of the ordinance of 1787 to any territory which maybe added 
to the Union. I hold now, as I held then, that the South 
have no right to complain of such an application of these 
principles by those of us who have declared this doctrine in 
advance, and who have steadily opposed all acquisition of 
territory. I hold now, as I held then, that their reproaches 
and fulminations ought to be exclusively reserved for those 
among themselves, and for their allies in other parts of the 



ROBERT C. WIXTHROP. 119 

country, who have persisted in bringing this territory into 
the Union to be the subject of a great domestic struggle. . . . 
Gentlemen talk of settling the whole controversy which has 
been kindled between the North and the South by some 
sweeping compromise, or some comprehensive plan of recon- 
ciliation. I trust that the controversy will be settled, sir; 
but I most earnestly hope and pray that it will not be so 
settled that we shall ever again imagine that we can enter 
with impunity on a career of aggression, spoliation, and 
conquest. This embittered strife, tins protracted suspense, 
these tedious days and weeks and months of anxiety and 
agitation, will have had their full compensation and reward 
if they shall teach us never again to forget the curse which 
has been pronounced upon those 'who remove their neigh- 
bors' landmarks,' — if they shall teach us to realize, in all 
time to come, that a policy of peace, and of justice towards 
others, is the very law and condition of our own domestic 
harmony. . . . 

I have no faith in the plan of raking open all the subjects 
of disagreement and difference which have existed at any 
time between different sections of the county, with a view 
of attempting to bring them within the influence of some 
single panacea. Certainly, sir, if such a plan is to be at- 
tempted, we are not to forget that there are two sides to the 
question of aggression. The Southern States complain, on 
the one side, that some of their runaway slaves have not been 
delivered up, according to the provisions of the Constitution. 
The Northern States complain, on the other side, that some of 
their freemen have been seized and imprisoned, contrary to 
the provisions of the same Constitution. I will not under- 
take to compare the two grievances ; but this I do say, that 
if the one is to be insisted on as a subject for immediate 
redress and reparation, I see not why the other should not be 
also. For myself, I acknowledge my allegiance to the whole 
Constitution of the United States, and I am willing to unite 
in fulfilling and enforcing, in all reasonable and proper 



120 A MEMOIR OF 

modes, every one of its provisions. I recognize, indeed, a 
Power above all human law-makers, and a code above all 
earthly constitutions ! And whenever I perceive a plain 
conflict of jurisdiction and authority between the Constitu- 
tion of my country and the laws of my God, my course is 
clear. I shall resign my office, whatever it may be, and 
renounce all connection with the public service of any sort. 
But it is a libel upon the Constitution, and, what is worse, it 
is a libel upon the great and good men who framed, adopted, 
and ratified it, to assert or insinuate that there is any such 
inconsistency. It is a favorite policy, I know, of some of 
the ultraists in my own part of the country, to stigmatize the 
Constitution as a proslavery compact. I deny it. I hold, on 
the other hand, that it is a pro-liberty contract, — the most 
effective that the world has ever seen, Magna Charta not 
excepted. 

Mr. Winthrop then discussed at some length the 
Constitution in its relation to slavery, continuing : — 

Undoubtedly, Mr. Chairman, there are provisions in the 
Constitution which involve us in painful obligations, and 
from which some of us would rejoice to be relieved; but 
whenever any measure is proposed to me for fulfilling or 
enforcing any one of its clear obligations or express stipula- 
tions, I shall give to it every degree of attention, considera- 
tion, and support which the justice, the wisdom, the propriety, 
and the practicability of its peculiar provisions may demand 
or warrant. In legislating, however, for the restoration of 
Southern slaves, I shall not forget the security of Northern 
freemen. Nor in testifying my allegiance to what has been 
termed the extradition clause of the Constitution, shall I 
overlook those great fundamental principles of all free gov- 
ernments, — the Habeas Corpus and the Trial by Jury. 

He then proceeded to warmly advocate the immediate 
admission of California with her existing Constitution. 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 121 

It is said [he added] that this Constitution has been 
cooked. Who cooked it? That her people have been tam- 
pered with. Who tampered with them ? As has been truly 
said, we have a Southern President and a majority of South- 
ern men in the Cabinet ; and they sent a Southern agent — 
a Georgia member of Congress — a gentleman, let me say, 
for whose character and conduct I have the highest respect 
— to bear their despatches and communicate their views to 
the California settlers. It is said that these settlers are a 
wild, reckless, floating population, bent only upon digging 
gold, and unworthy to be trusted in establishing a govern- 
ment. Sir, I do not believe a better class of emigrants was 
ever found flocking in such numbers to any new settlement 
on the face of the earth. The immense distance, the formid- 
able difficulties, and the onerous expense of the pilgrimage to 
California, necessarily confined the emigration to men of 
some pecuniary substance as well as to men of more than 
ordinary physical endurance. . . . 

'But what is to become of our equilibrium?' sa} r s an 
honorable friend from South Carolina. 'What security are 
the Southern States to have against the growing preponder- 
ance of Northern power ? ' Mr. Chairman, half the troubles 
which have convulsed the old world for two centuries past, 
have grown out of an imagined necessity of preserving the 
balance of power, or maintaining what is now denominated 
a sectional equilibrium. And so it will be here. The very 
idea of this equilibrium is founded on views of sectional 
jealousy, sectional fear, sectional hostility and hate. It pre- 
supposes an encroaching and oppressive spirit on one side or 
the other, but no such state of things exists. Nothing, cer- 
tainly, can be more unfounded than the idea that the North 
has any real hostility to the South, or that Northern men, as 
a class, are desirous of injuring, or even of irritating, their 
Southern brethren. They know that the interests of all 
parts of the country are bound up together in the same 
bundle of life or death, for the same good or evil destiny. 



122 A MEMOIR OF 

They desire — from a mere selfish interest of their own, if 
you will have it so — the prosperity and welfare of the 
Southern States, and rejoice at every indication of their 
increasing wealth and power. They believe, indeed, that 
the worst enemy of these States is that which they cherish 
so jealously and so passionately within their own bosom. 
They believe slavery to have originated in a monstrous 
wrong. They believe its continuance to be a great evil. 
They are undoubtedly of opinion that in this day of civiliza- 
tion and Christianity, it would well become those who are 
responsible for its continuance, to be looking about at least 
for some prospective and gradual system, by which at some 
far distant, if not at some earlier day, it may be brought to 
an end. They are ready, as I believe, to bear their share 
of the cost and sacrifice of any such system. But they know 
that they themselves have no power over the subject. They 
acknowledge that, so far as slavery in the States is con- 
cerned, they possess no constitutional right to interfere with 
it in any way whatever. . . . But, Mr. Chairman, this idea 
that a free State is never to be admitted to the Union without 
a slave State to match it, is, in my judgment, as impracticable 
as it is unjustifiable. . . . Sir, you did not wait for a free State 
to come in hand in hand with Texas. You regarded no prin- 
ciples of equilibrium or uniformity on that occasion. You 
brought her in to disturb the equilibrium then existing, and 
to secure for the South a preponderance in at least one 
branch of the Government. And with this example in our 
immediate view, the North, the free States, cannot but feel 
a<yorieved if the admission of California is to be made in any 
degree dependent upon considerations of this sort. . . . 

And now, turning from California, what remains? New 
Mexico and Utah. And what are we to do with them? 
Nothing, nothing, I reply, which shall endanger the harmony 
and domestic peace of these United States. Undoubtedly 
my own honest impulse and earnest disposition would be to 
organize territorial governments over both of them, and to 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 123 

ingraft upon those governments the principles of the ordi- 
nance of 1787. If I were consulting only my own feelings, or 
what I believe to be the wishes and views of the people of 
New England, this would be my unhesitating course, though 
I am under the impression that the laws of Mexico abolishing 
slavery are still in force in New Mexico. But, sir, I am not 
for overturning the government of my countiy, or for running 
any risk of so disastrous a result, in order to accomplish this 
object in the precise mode which would be most satisfactory 
to myself. Nor would I press such a course pertinaciously 
upon Congress; even although the consequences should be 
nothing more serious than to plant a sting in the bosoms of the 
people of the South, or to leave an impression in their minds 
that they had been wronged and humiliated. What, then, am 
I ready to do ? Sir, I have already expressed my intention 
to stand by the President's plan on this subject, and nothing 
has since occurred to change that intention. I have heard 
this plan stigmatized as weak and contemptible ; but I believe 
it to be wise and patriotic, and one which, whether it succeeds 
or fails, will have entitled the President to the unmingled 
gratitude and respect of the American people. It is, in my 
judgment, the only plan which gives a triumph to neither 
side of this controversy, and to neither section of the Union, 
and which thus leaves no just pretence for the formation of 
geographical parties. It is a middle ground, on which both 
sides can meet without the abandonment of any principle, or 
the sacrifice of any point of honor, and I can truly say that 
I agree to it in a spirit of conciliation and concession, re- 
garding it as a compromise worthy of a Southern President 
to offer, and worthy of both the Southern and the Northern 
people to accept. . . . 

Most gladly would I have found myself agreeing more 
entirely with some of the friends whom I see around me, and 
with more than one of those elsewhere, with whom I have 
always been proud to be associated, and whose lead, on almost 
all occasions, I have rejoiced to follow. ... I see, Mr. Chair- 



124 A MEMOIR OF 

man, in the territorial possessions of this Union, the seats of 
new states, the cradles of new commonwealths, the nurseries, 
it may be, of new Republican empires. I see in them the 
future abodes of our brethren, our children, and our children's 
children, for a thousand generations. I see growing up within 
their borders institutions upon which the character and con- 
dition of a vast multitude of the American family, and of the 
human race, in all time to come, are to depend. I feel that, 
for the original shaping and moulding of these institutions, 
you and I, and each one of us who occupy these seats, are 
in part responsible. And I look back instinctively to the day, 
now more than two hundred years ago, when the forefathers 
of New England were planting their little colony upon that 
rock-bound shore, — to a day when slavery existed nowhere 
upon the American continent, and before that first Dutch ship, 
' built in the eclipse and rigged with curses dark,' had made 
its way to Jamestown, with a cargo of human beings in bond- 
age ! I reflect how much our fathers would have exulted, 
could they have arrested the progress of that ill-starred 
vessel, and of all others of kindred employment. I remember 
how earnestly the patriots of Virginia and South Carolina 
again and again pleaded and protested against the policy of 
Great Britain in forcing slaves upon them against their will. 
I recall the original language of the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence, as first drafted by Thomas Jefferson, assigning it 
as one of the moving causes for throwing off our allegiance 
to the British monarch, that, ' determined to keep open a 
market where men should be bought and sold, he had prosti- 
tuted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt 
to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce.' I remem- 
ber, too, that whatever material advantages may have since 
been derived from slave labor, in the cultivation of a crop 
which was then unknown to our country, the moral character 
and social influences of the institution are still precisely what 
they were described to be, by those who understood them 
best, in the earlier days of the Republic. And I see, too, as 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 125 

no man can help seeing, that almost all the internal dangers 
and domestic dissensions which cast a doubt, or a shadow of 
doubt, upon the perpetuity of the Union, have been and still 
are, the direct or indirect consequences of the existence of 
this institution. And thus seeing, thus remembering, thus 
reflecting, how can I do otherwise than resolve that it shall 
be by no vote of mine that slavery shall be established in any 
territory where it does not already exist ? 1 

I here resume my extracts from Mr. Winthrop's 
notes : — 

Ashmun and other confidential friends of Webster ex- 
pressed themselves as entirely satisfied with the ground 
I had taken. Choate sent me word he considered it an 
admirable juste milieu between the 7th of March speech and 
the rhapsodies of Horace Mann. On the other hand, I 

learned that had positively asserted that Webster had 

told him in Boston that he should not speak to Mr. Winthrop 
again. To test this, on Webster's return (for he was absent 
when I spoke) I accosted him when we first met, at James 
G. King's. He was polite, but frigid, and evidently out of 
humor that evening, for to poor Daniel P. King his manner 
was quite savage. Just after this, Hiram Ketchum, a devoted 
friend of Webster, wrote to me for three hundred copies of 
the speech to distribute in New York, telling me he had 
caused passages from it to be inserted in many newspapers. 
In thanking him, I expressed regret that D. W. had not 
shared his complimentary opinion of it. Ketchum replied, 
' Give him time. I am writing what I think.' I imagine 

1 In the second volume of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power, 
Henry Wilson describes this speech (to which he assigns a wrong date) 
as " very able and adroit, an attempt to reconcile his former votes in 
favor of the Wilmot Proviso with the new policy and new departure he 
was about to adopt." Whether this was a fair account of it, there may 
be two opinions. It will be found in full, with earlier Congressional 
speeches, in the first volume of Mr. Winthrop's Addresses. 



126 A MEMOIR OF 

Webster obtained his first impression without having read 
what I had really said, as shortly after he was cordial as ever, 
and I perceived the breach was healed. Fillmore was good 
enough to say he thought it the best speech made in the 
House during the session. Per contra, Cass attacked me in 
the Senate and said (so I am assured) that my flattery of the 
President was ' sickening,' but he much softened this in the 
Globe and even paid me a compliment. Toombs, too, made 
a premeditated and concerted onslaught upon me, which he 
greatly changed in the Globe, leaving me less ground for 
a reply, had I cared to make one. Some one mailed me a 
copy of this speech, published in Ohio without my knowl- 
edge. I thought of sending it to Giddings. 

Partly owing to a short-sightedness which often pre- 
vented him from recognizing persons with whom he 
was but slightly acquainted, and partly to a certain 
native hauteur, Mr. Winthrop was, as a rule, no favorite 
with reporters, but I find in a local paper the following 
description of a reception given by him on the 4th of 
July, 1850 : — 

" Mr. Winthrop's brilliant reception on the evening of the 
4th was such a gathering as Faneuil Hall would have ap- 
proved on this anniversary. It was a purely American party, 
the patriotism and good taste of the host having in his invi- 
tations to his numerous guests discarded all distinction of 
party or locality. Governor McDowell of Virginia was 
among the first who entered ; so the Bay State and the old 
Dominion stood hand-in-hand as they did in the persons of 
John Adams and Thomas Jefferson in 1776. At supper Mr. 
"Winthrop had on his left Mr. Cobb, his successful competitor 
for the Speakership, with Vice-President Fillmore on his 
right. Near by were Benton and Foote, Webster and Horace 
Mann, the members elect from California, with Clingman and 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 127 

Venable, who are striving to keep them out, and members of 
the Cabinet side by side with those who are ready to im- 
peach them ; but all in genial companionship. Strange 
antagonisms were thus blended under the influence of old 
associations, and the memory of the fathers appeased for the 
moment the animosities of their sons. The occasion was 
altogether one of the most agreeable I have witnessed in 
Washington, but there was one feature which gave it a tinge 
of a different character. It was understood to be a sort of 
farewell gathering, in view of Mr. Winthrop's approaching 
retirement from Congress, a course which, I am told, he is 
fully resolved upon. Such a man, it is true, cannot long 
remain in retirement while public virtue and statesmanlike 
accomplishments are regarded as a passport to the public 
service. But Washington society will miss the elegant 
hospitality so liberally exercised by Mr. Winthrop, and they 
will miss even more the presence of a statesman whose 
character is formed upon the model of those who filled the 
highest official station in the earlier and purer days of the 
Republic." 

Five days later came a thunder-clap, the death of 
President Taylor after a short illness, — a profound 
grief to Mr. Winthrop, and an irreparable misfortune, 
as he thought, to the country. In his remarks on the 
subject in the House (July 10, 1850), he said : — 

There are those of us, I need not say, who had looked to 
him with affection and reverence as our chosen leader and 
guide in the difficulties and perplexities by which we are 
surrounded. There are those of us who had relied confi- 
dently on him, as upon no other man, to uphold the Constitu- 
tion and maintain the Union of the country in that future 
upon which 'shadows, clouds, and darkness' may well be 
said to rest. And as we now behold him, borne away by the 
hand of God from our sight, we can hardly repress the 



^ 



12S A MEMOIR OF 

exclamation which was applied to the departing prophet of 
old, 'My father, my father, the chariot of Israel, and the 
horsemen thereof.' . . . 

I hazard nothing, sir, in saying that the roll of our Chief 
Magistrates, since 1789, illustrious as it is, presents the name 
of no man who has enjoyed a higher reputation with his con- 
temporaries, or who will enjoy a higher reputation with 
posterity, than Zaehary Taylor, for some of the best and 
noblest qualities which adorn our nature. His indomitable 
courage, his unimpeachable honesty, his Spartan simplicity 
and sagacity, his frankness, kindness, moderation, and mag- 
nanimity, his fidelity to his friends, his generosity and hu- 
manity to his enemies, the purity of his private life, the 
patriotism of Ms public principles, will never cease to be 
cherished in the grateful remembrance of all just men and 
all true-hearted Americans. As a soldier and a general, his 
fame is associated with some of the proudest and most thrill- 
ing scenes of our military history. As a civilian and states- 
man, during the brief period in which he has been permitted 
to enjoy the transcendent honors which a grateful country 
had awarded him, he has given proof of a devotion to duty, 
of an attachment to the Constitution and the Union, of a 
patriotic determination to maintain the peace of the country, 
which no trials or temptations could shake. He has borne 
his faculties meekly, but firmly. He has been ' clear in his 
great office.' He has known no local partialities or prejudices, 
but has proved himself capable of embracing his whole 
country in the comprehensive affections and regards of a 
large and generous heart. 

On the 14th of July Mr. Winthrop, who had been 
both a pall-bearer of the deceased President and Chair- 
man of the Committee of the House which escorted 
his successor to take the oath, wrote his friend Clifford 
as follows : — 



ROBERT C. WIXTHROP. 129 

The funeral was impressive. ' Old Whitey ' pressed close 
to the coffin, as if he knew his master was there, reminding 
me of Vernet's Dead Trumpeter. All else was cold and 
formal. Scott, his great military rival, if not enemy, at the 
head of the escort ; Cass, Clay, Webster, and Benton, among 
the pall-bearers, — gave, certainly, no impression of grief 
at his loss ; Truman Smith, Vinton, Joe Gales, and I did 
most of the mourning, I fancy, in that part of the procession. 
For myself, it requires all my faith in an overruling Provi- 
dence to prevent me from regarding the loss as irreparable 
and fatal. In any strife which may await us, his name was 
worth to us an army with banners. Another week, too, 
would have brought from him a manifesto, which would have 
done more to bring things to a crisis, and ultimately settle 
them, than anything which could have been done. But the 
past is beyond recall. What of the future ? Fillmore is an 
amiable, excellent, conscientious fellow. What he will do 
remains to be seen. Clay and Webster have been closeted 
with him, and he sent me a message by a New York friend 
that he would like to see me. I called, but did not find him. 
If he really wishes to see me, he will send again. Clay 
presses Webster for Secretary of State, and there is a rumor 
that he recommends Toombs for Secretary of War. If this 
latter nomination be made, my course is clear. ' What fel- 
lowship hath light with darkness? Or what concord a 
Christian with Belial ? ' As to Webster's nomination, I see 
that it will jeopard the Whig party in the Free States, and 
indicate a policy on Fillmore's part which I cannot altogether 
approve. Still I shall not oppose it, or say anything against 
it. The times are out of joint, and it needs a strong man to 
carry on the Government. If Fillmore takes Webster, we 
must support him as well as we can. I am aware that my 
own name is mentioned for the State Department, but I do 
not think anything would tempt me to take it. Even if my 
health would stand it, what could I do with Clay and 
Webster in open, or tacit, opposition? . . . But for the 

9 



130 A MEMOIR OF 

odium of the Galplrin claim, I should like to have Fillmore 
go right on, taking up the thread where Taylor dropped it, 
keeping the Cabinet just as it is. Some of them are excellent 
fellows, Ewing especially. Crawford, however, has given an 
odor of unscrupulousness to the whole concern which maked 
it difficult to keep them. 

The member of the Massachusetts delegation who 
was on a confidential footing with the new President 
was Joseph Grinnell of New Bedford, who was also 
a very intimate friend of Mr. Winthrop, from whose 
notes I here continue my extracts : — 

Late in the evening of July lGth Grinnell came in and 
said, ' Fillmore is always slow in making up his mind, but 
this time he is in a pitiable state of indecision, there are so 
many doubts and difficulties, and he is so anxious to do the 
riffht thing. The offer of the State Department lies between 
you and Webster. Personally he would prefer you, but 
Webster is strongly urged. He would like to talk the 
matter over with you, and says he thinks he can rely on you 
for disinterested advice.' I replied that it would be better 
to make an appointment, which Grinnell did for the next 
day. I found Nathan K. Hall and one or two other persons 
in the President's parlor, 1 and he took me into his dressing- 
room, where there was but one chair, and we sat together on 
a narrow bed, in true Republican simplicity. I told him 
I would not waste time by beating about the bush, that I 
understood from Grinnell that he was hesitating whether to 
offer the State Department to Webster or to me, and that 
he would like my frank opinion on the subject. He nodded 
assent. I said that, after careful consideration, I had come 
to a very decided conclusion that Webster should have the 
preference. As to myself, while I did not affect to doubt 

1 Mr. Fillmore had not yet taken possession of the White House, but 
was at Willard's hotel. 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 131 

my own capacity, and had been urged to take the post, if 
offered, I did not believe my appointment would be a wise 
one in the existing condition of the country ; that I was 
obnoxious to men of extreme opinions at both ends of the 
Union ; that some Southern Whigs, who had hitherto stood 
by me against Toombs, were disappointed with what I had 
said on the 8th of May ; that in my own State I was now 
between three fires, — the Democrac}^ the Free-Soilers, and 
certain Webster Whigs, who blamed me for not indorsing the 
7th of March speech and who would be furious if I were pre- 
ferred to Webster ; that I should be willing to risk my 
health by remaining some years longer in Washington if 
I felt there was a probability of my accomplishing any real 
good at the head of Ins Cabinet, but my feeling was just the 
other way. As to Webster, that he was an intellectual giant, 
with a weight in the country beside which my own was 
insignificant ; that I had not always been able to agree with 
him ; that I had sometimes thought him influenced by jealousy 
or pique, but that I believed him to be at heart a true patriot, 
whose recent course, much as I regretted it, was dictated by 
a sincere desire to save the country from civil war ; that as 
a measure of mere party expediency I might hesitate to 
recommend an appointment which would undoubtedly shock 
many Northern Whigs, but in view of the dangers and diffi- 
culties which surrounded the Union, I believed he would be 
the safest choice. Fillmore replied at some length, saying 
among other things that a President might well hesitate to 
be overshadowed in his own Cabinet, that Webster was not 
easy to get on with ; reminding me that when he (Fillmore) 
was Chairman of Ways and Means and Webster Secretary of 
State to Tyler, they had differed over the Exchequer bill, 
and Webster had not spoken to him for more than a year. 
I rejoined that no one was better aware than myself of the 
awful character of Webster's frowns, that I did not contend 
that he was an ideal premier, but that I honestly believed 
him to be, all things considered, the wisest selection in the 






132 A MEMOIR OF 

existing crisis. He said he would take a night to think it 
over, and we then discussed some other matters. I did not 
consider it quite fair to ask him point blank if he intended 
to adopt Taylor's policy ; but he left in my mind the impres- 
sion that he approved it. When we parted he said some 
complimentary things about me which I will not set down. 
As soon as I got home I made a point of letting Ashmun 
know the substance of what had taken place, in case it should 
reach Webster's ears that I had been closeted with the 
President. The next day, while at my desk in the House, 
Webster sent for me to come into the lobby, said he had 
learned from more than one source the advice I had given, 
and had come to thank me ; that while he thought me well 
fitted to be Secretary of State, and hoped one day to see me 
in that office, he was himself not indisposed to resume it, and 
had reason to believe it would now be offered to him. I re- 
plied that my advice had been given on public grounds, and 
not as a matter of private friendship. He rejoined, with great 
cordiality, ' I am none the less sensible of your generous and 
manly course.' * 

On the day the nominations went to the Senate, Webster 
again sent for me to the lobby. ' Before you and I leave this 
sofa,' said he, ' I shall probably have been confirmed. Now, 
if there is anything under the sun that I can do for you, 
name it. Shall I write to Governor Briggs asking him to 
appoint you as my successor ? ' I replied that I had rather 
not ; that though I had fully expected to break up my estab- 

1 The utterance of a conventional nolo episcopari is not confined to 
English prelates. On the 21st of July (three days after this conver- 
sation) Mr. Webster wrote Peter Harvey, " I was persuaded to think it 
was my duty in the present crisis to accept a seat in the Cabinet, but it 
made my heart ache to think of it." Private Correspondence of Daniel 
Webster, vol. ii. p. 378. On the same day he wrote Franklin Haven, " I 
never did anything more reluctantly than taking the office which I have 
taken. . . . You will be glad to know that Mr. Winthrop acted in the 
most friendly, open, and decided manner. He behaved like a man 
throughout." Life of Daniel Webster, by G. T. Curtis, vol. ii. p. 465. 






















Aw 



> 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 133 

lishment in Washington at the end of the session, the honor 
of succeeding to Daniel Webster's seat in the Senate was too 
great to be put aside, but that, if it came, it must come un- 
sought; that my name would obviously occur to Briggs 
without any prompting, but that there were other claims, 
and he must have a free hand. He rejoined, ' All I can say 
is that if, while I am at the head of affairs, there should be 
any way in which, directly or indirectly, I can be of service 
to you, you will have only to say the word.' I thanked him 
for his friendly expressions, but said such a word would 
never be spoken by me. The following Sunday morning he 
sat in my pew at Dr. Butler's church, as he was often in the 
habit of doing. As we walked away after service, he men- 
tioned that all his letters stated that I was to be Senator. 
I replied that I had at first been pleased with the idea, but 
now had some misgivings on the subject. ' How so ? ' said 
he. I answered that if I went to the Senate just now, my 
attitude might seem to him an ungracious one ; that I had no 
new speeches to make, that my platform was laid down, and 
I could take no step backward ; that, differing as we did 
about the Compromise measures, my votes might not be 
altogether agreeable to him. He said, ' To tell the honest 
truth, I should not be sorry if you were called away for a 
fortnight or so ; but, as it is, we must make the best of it. 
Of course you cannot change your ground.' 

The next morning brought Mr. Winthrop his com- 
mission. His promotion was greeted by a diversity of 
appreciation in New England, and as a perceptible 
degree of sameness is apt to pervade the congratula- 
tions of personal friends and political supporters, I 
prefer to cull an extract from a sprightly leader in the 
Worcester " Sp} 7 ," then the most active Free-Soil organ 
in Massachusetts : — 

"Robert C. Winthrop will make a fit successor to Daniel 



134 A MEMOIR OF 

Webster in the Senate of the United States ; and the only 
consolation we have in his appointment is that he has been 
taken away from the House, where there is a bare chance 
that his place may be filled by a better man, — a worse they 
will hardly be able to get." 



VII. 



When Mr. Winthrop entered the Senate (July 30, 
1850), that body was in the last stages of the discus- 
sion of the Compromise measures, important votes oc- 
curring daily, — one of them only an hour after he had 
taken his seat. He had no new profession of political 
faith to make, but he was soon drawn into the debate, 
speaking at intervals upon a variety of questions, — in 
particular upon the Texas Boundary Bill, the Fugitive 
Slave Bill, and the Bill for abolishing the Slave Trade in 
the District of Columbia. These speeches, though not 
infrequent, were comparatively short, and they contain 
no passages which it is essential to cite in this memoir. 1 
I prefer therefore to quote extracts from a few of his 
private letters : — 

[Aug. 1, 1850.] The Compromise is dead, and I ' saw it 
die.' I can't say that I did much Avith ' my little bow and 
arrow,' but I made one motion which had more import than 
it may seem. It was the only way of getting a clean vote in 
favor of the California Bill, and a clean vote against the Utah 
Bill. Failing to strike out Utah from California, the only 
way was to strike out California from Utah. So said Benton, 
Smith, Phelps, Clarke, and other old stagers at the outset; 

1 They are all to be found in the " Congressional Globe," some of them 
in Mr. Winthrop's volumes. One is described by Henry Wilson as " brief, 
but very cogent." See " Rise and Fall of the Slave Power," vol. ii. p. 294. 









ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 135 

and so said Ewing, Davis, Seward, Baldwin, and your humble 
servant, on a reconsideration. They put it upon me to father 
the motion, but the sponsors must take their share of the 
responsibility. It was the only mode by which the bill could 
be reduced to its simple elements, and by which the great 
principle of unmixed legislation could be vindicated. 

[Aug. 11.] As Clay had publicly laid the whole blame 
of the defeat of the Compromise on Pearce, 1 the latter has 
been hard at work on a settlement of the Boundary question, 
and has consulted Senators both from Texas and New Eng- 
land (myself included) in the hope of reconciling their con- 
flicting views. His measure does not wholly satisfy me, and 
I anticipate not a few revilings from Massachusetts extrem- 
ists for my support of it. But I trust the Whig party proper 
will be able to stand what Taylor suggested, Fillmore pro- 
posed, Webster advised, and John Davis and I voted for. 
We voted in company with Clarke and Greene of Rhode 
Island, Truman Smith of Connecticut, Phelps of Vermont, 
and Cooper of Pennsylvania. If other Free-State Whigs would 
have gone with us, all would have been easy ; but Ewing, 
with an election in Ohio before him, did not like to separate 
from Chase ; Seward clung to Hale ; and Baldwin and 
Upham are rigid against the slightest concession. The bill 
involved no principle, — it was a mere question of acres and 
dollars, — but it was the one thing needful for the public 
peace. It has taken away the whole platform of the disorgan- 
izers. Settle this Texan boundary, run the New-Mexican 
line, and, whatever happens, the Union is safe. Texas itself 
becomes a guaranty for this, for her sympathies are all with 
the conservative South, and she has had no fellowship with 
the nullifiers except upon the question of her territorial rights. 
By this bill we have saved for free soil much that would have 
been doomed to slavery, and we can now wait patiently until 
New Mexico shall be admitted as a State. Still it was a pill 

1 James A. Pearce, Senator from Maryland, a particular friend of the 
writer. 



13G A MEMOIR OF 

to swallow, and Davis and I felt bound to complain both of 
the boundaries and the bonus, and to attempt some alteration. 
Yet, on the whole, my judgment approves. Grinnell and 
Ashnmn are strong for it ; and, I think, Rockwell and Dun- 
can. The Southern Ultras will leave no stone unturned 
to defeat it. . . . We shall admit California (D. V.) on 
Monday. 

[Aug. 25.] The Fugitive Bill, with all its objectionable 
features, has passed to be engrossed. It is neither Webster's 
bill nor Clay's, but James M. Mason's, of which, however, my 
illustrious predecessor said that he intended to support it, 
with all its provisions, to the full extent. Not so said I; 
and, after trying in vain for Trial by Jury, and Habeas Corpus 
and Protection for Free Colored Seamen, I voted against it. 
The South, as I think, has overreached itself in pressing this 
bill. They will get few runaways under it, while it will be 
a constant source of irritation and inflammation ; besides giv- 
ing a fresh base to the Free-Soil party. . . . Webster was so 
much gratified by Davis's and my support of Pearce's Boun- 
dary Bill, that he called on Gov. D. (from whom, as you 
know, he has been for some time alienated), and then insisted 
that we should both dine with him. D. was prevented by a 
family affliction, but I went, finding the entire Cabinet, includ- 
ing Scott, who is acting Secretary of War, and who had pre- 
viously been to see me to urge going for Pearce's bill. 

[Sept. 15.] Davis and I took some risk in voting against 
Seward's indiscreet amendment to the Bill for abolishing the 
Slave Trade in the District. But wisdom is justified of her 
children, and our course is crowned by the passage of the bill 
yesterday. My personal relations with Seward are pleasant, 
but I fear he is bent on mischief and designs to get up issues 
for placing other people in a false position. His organ 
(Weed) attacked me grossly on the strength of an inaccurate 
telegraphic report of what I said. The truth is, Seward is at 
heart anti-Fillmore and anti-Administration, and, unless I am 
greatly mistaken, he will one day go over to the Free Soilers. 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 137 

Speaking of telegraphic blunders, did you see a very amusing 
one about me ? ' Senator Downs of Louisiana made a speech 
denunciatory of Mr. Winthrop's violent manner, loth in matter 
and in gesticulation.'' This was intended to read ' Senator 
Downs of Louisiana made a speech denunciatory of Mr. Win- 
throp, violent both in matter and gesticulation.' On the 
strength of this mistake, some newspaper-mouser of the future 
in the guise of a historian may represent me to have been a 
sort of swashbuckler ! 

Of the various exciting topics then in controversy 
between the two sections of the Union, — particularly 
between the inhabitants of the Northern and Southern 
seaboards, — the most inflammatory was the question of 
the proper treatment of free colored seamen in Southern 
ports. On the one hand, the South honestly believed 
these seamen often to be abolition emissaries, the possible 
instigators of slave insurrections, w r ho, as a measure of 
precaution, were to be subjected to stringent laws; 
wdiile, on the other hand, the sensibilities of the North 
were continually outraged by the severity of such laws, 
and the hardships resulting from them to innocent and 
inoffensive persons. Mr. Winthrop had long been 
familiar with this subject, having treated it fully in a 
report made by him to the House on behalf of the Com- 
mittee on Commerce, in 1843, and it was a matter in 
which the shipowners of Boston were deeply interested. 
It was, however, far from his intention to signalize the 
first month of his Senatorial career by stirring up any 
discussion of these obnoxious laws ; but it so happened 
that to Mr. Clay's Bill for the Abolition of the Slave 
Trade in the District of Columbia, Senator Pratt of Mary- 
land had proposed an amendment dealing with the free 



138 A MEMOIR OF 

colored population of the District in a manner which 
Mr. Winthrop considered unwarrantable and unjust. 
In condemning and opposing the Pratt amendment, he 
made a passing allusion to the abuses arising from some 
of the police regulations of Southern States ; and when 
Senator Butler of South Carolina had objected to the 
word " abuses," contending that the regulations com- 
plained of were practically measures of self-preserva- 
tion, Mr. Winthrop felt obliged to produce evidence. 
Thereupon an angry debate sprang up, stretching over 
two days (Sept. 11-12, 1850), Senators Berrien of 
Georgia, Davis of Mississippi, Downs and Soule of 
Louisiana, all warmly sustaining Butler, accusing Mr. 
Winthrop of exaggeration, and subjecting him to a 
running fire of interruption and criticism. He was 
forced to speak half a dozen times, at some length and 
with much animation ; but as Butler and Berrien were 
old friends, and he had latterly seen something of Jef- 
ferson Davis (who was General Taylor's son-in-law), he 
strove to give no cause of offence, except in so far as it 
was necessary to vindicate his statements. To Senator 
Soule, indeed, he was magnanimous. The latter had 
denied the existence of a Louisiana law which had been 
cited, and roundly intimated that Mr. Winthrop had 
been imposed upon. As Soule was a leader of the 
New Orleans bar, this assertion was for the moment 
accepted as conclusive, until a few days later Mr. 
Winthrop procured a printed copy of the statute to 
which he had alluded. Instead, however, of producing 
it on the floor and making a scene, he showed it 
privately to Soule, suggesting that he should choose his 
own form of retraction in the Senate, which he did, 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 139 

frankly admitting that his memory had betrayed him. 
After the second day's debate was over, Mr. Clay took 
occasion to say to Mr. Winthrop that he felt that the 
latter had been treated with unusual and unnecessary 
harshness, but that it was attributable to the excited 
state of Southern feeling. " You have little reason to 
complain," he added; "you held your own against 
great odds." * Horace Mann evidently preferred a 
more drastic method of treating political opponents. 
In one of his private letters from Washington, pub- 
lished after his death and dated Sept. 15, 1850, he 
says : — 

" There has been a very sharp debate in the Senate, in which 
the Southern men rode and overrode Mr. Winthrop, and 
hunted up all the ugly things they could say about Massa- 
chusetts and pitched them at him. I do not think Mr. Win- 
throp has sustained himself very well. He ought to have 
carried the war into Africa, or, at least, to have repelled the 
intruders from his own territory. When we speak of the 
South as they are, the first thing they do is to ransack our 
old history and quote whatever they can find, either against 
the law of toleration as we now consider it, or the duties of 
humanity as a higher civilization exemplifies and expounds 
them. They have never yet been properly answered. If 

1 Not long after, Mr. Winthrop printed and circulated a pamphlet 
containing, not merely this debate, but one which occurred a few days 
earlier, bearing upon the same subject, together with some subsequent 
explanations and a variety of evidence, — the whole extracted from the 
" Congressional Globe," and entitled " Proceedings of the United States 
Senate on the Fugitive Slave Bill, the Abolition of the Slave Trade in 
the District of Columbia, and the Imprisonment of Free Colored Seamen 
in the Southern Ports ; with the Speeches of Senators Davis, Winthrop, 
and others." As this pamphlet comprised nearly seventy pages of small 
type, he did not include it in his published works, but it is to be found in 
most large libraries. 



140 A MEMOIR OF 

some such man as Sumner was in the seat, he would turn 
the tables on them." 2 

From Boston, however, Mr. Winthrop received letters 
of approval from men of different shades of opinion. 
Edward Everett, for instance, wrote : — 

" I cannot forbear writing you a line to thank you for your 
manly and well-sustained stand on the subject of the code 
noir of the Southern States. Nothing could have been done 
more handsomely, effectively, or in better taste. Although 
certain Senators may affect to treat your statements with dis- 
dain, and meet them with contumely, they will in their 
hearts respect you for the boldness and freedom with which 
you have assailed the abuses of their system." 

Richard H. Dana, Jr., wrote : — 

" Permit me to congratulate you upon the manner in which 
you conducted this debate. The style in which it was done 
is commended by all. Massachusetts is with you on this 
point, and in all your late votes, I do not doubt ; but Boston 
is against you. I do not wish to disparage my own city, but 
the composition of its elements is peculiar. It is not the 
Boston of 1776 or 1820." 2 

Anson Burlingame wrote : — 

" [Sept. 19, 1850.] Permit me to say that your replies to 
Jefferson Davis, Downs, SouLi and Co. were models of dig- 
nified yet indignant rebuke, and have awakened for you 
countless sympathies in hearts heretofore closed against you 
politically. I am not singular in this estimate of your efforts. 
Many of the most worthy and able men with whom I have 

1 Life of Mann, p. 230. This gratification was in store for him. 

2 What Mr. Dana implied was that, at this juncture, the Democracy 
and Webster Whigs united could control Boston. 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 141 

lately voted express themselves unreservedly to the same 
extent. I honestly think — and I say it frankly to you — that 
your recent bearing in the Senate has done more to commend 
you to the people of this State than any other act of your 
stirring political life. We of the North are, as a general 
thing, not so well trained as Southern statesmen for sudden 
parliamentary encounters ; but here you met an occasion of 
great difficulty, and met it bravely and brilliantly, exhibiting 
both tact and power. . . . 

" If you ever see the ' Republican,' a sickly paper which pre- 
tends or tries to speak for the Free-Soil party, pray give no 
heed to its reckless statements. It is in the hands of General 
Wilson, a good enough man in his proper place, but who is 
altogether beyond his depth in editing a newspaper. He is, 
or has been, anxious to get up another truck and dicker. 
We Whig Free-Soilers knocked that Democratic move in the 
head after considerable trouble, and we have not the least 
idea of being traded off to the Democracy to gratify any- 
body's desire to go to the United States Senate. Such men 
as Samuel Hoar, Stephen C. Phillips, Hopkins, Adams, Dana, 
etc., say openly that if anything of the kind is attempted, 
they must beg leave to wash their hands of it." x 

One letter I give in full, because the writer was per- 
haps the last person in New England from whom Mr. 
Winthrop could have anticipated a word of praise : — 

West Roxbury, Sept. 23, 1850. 
Deak Sie, — I have not been always much of an admirer 
of your course in Congress, and have often felt pained at the 
thought that the Representative from Boston should do as 

1 I am obliged to quote this passage in order to give some idea of the 
letters addressed to Mr. Winthrop, by persons not of his own way of think- 
ing, with regard to the famous Massachusetts Coalition. I disclaim, how- 
ever, any purpose of casting reflections upon General Wilson, concerning 
whose " depth " Mr. Burlingame undoubtedly changed his mind before 
long. 



142 A MEMOIR OF 

you have done. But of late your votes and your speeches in 

the Senate of the United States have been so just and so 

noble, as it seems to me, that I feel impelled to write you 

this note — stranger as I am to you — to thank you for the 

honorable and manly stand you have taken lately in the 

Senate. I know some of your friends (I mean your former 

friends) will excuse it on the score of policy and defend you, 

while they differ from you, because they will say the People 

of Massachusetts were to be conciliated before they choose a 

Senator. Some of your political opponents, I suppose, will 

be of the same opinion. But I can only ascribe your conduct 

to such motives as ought to animate a manly man, — a desire 

to do what is absolutely right. Allow me to say to yourself — 

what I would rather say anywhere else — that your conduct 

now seems particularly honorable and manly, when the 

temptation to swerve from justice seems to be so strong, and 

when there are such eminent examples of departure from the 

Eternal Right. Do not give yourself the trouble to answer 

this note, but accept the hearty thanks of 

Your Obt. Servt. 

Theo. Parker. 

Hon. Robert C. Winthrop. 

Congress adjourned on the 30th of September, meet- 
ing again early in December. Here follow a few more 
extracts from Mr. Winthrop' s private letters : — 

[Oct. 18, 1850.] I am by no means sure Massachusetts 
Whiggery will survive the shock the passage of the Fugitive 
Bill has given it, particularly as it is understood that the 
Democrats and Free Soilers have at last agreed on an equita- 
ble division of the loaves and fishes. How high-minded men 
can have anything to do with such a bargain passes my com- 
prehension ; but then high-minded men are scarce in politics, 
and as I am to be the principal loser by the transaction, I am 
naturally open to the suspicion of looking at it with a jaun- 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 143 

diced eye. 1 With my uncertain health and great dislike of 
the Washington climate, the idea of a full Senatorial term of 
six years was never alluring, but I should have preferred not 
to be cut short in my second session by a defeat in the Legis- 
lature, as it is now not unlikely. I am, as usual, between sev- 
eral fires. Webster and I are on perfectly good terms, but 
some of his peculiar friends regard me with a basilisk eye, 
and bitterly reproach my not having followed in his foot- 
steps. On the other hand, the Free Soilers are in no humor 
to forgive my old opposition to them, nor my recent vote for 
the Boundary Bill. Webster, by the way, is at Marshfield, — 
' the sick lion,' — with a good many beasts flocking to his 
den. I have not seen him yet, but I hear he is cross, an 
infallible sign of convalescence. 

[Nov. 12.] ' Into what pit thou seest, from what height 
fallen ! ' The telegraph will have told you the result. We 
are beaten, horse, foot, and dragoons, — or, in other words, 
Governor, Senate, and House, though the latter is a little 
uncertain. I feared it would come to this. Taylor's plat- 
form was as far as Massachusetts would go, whether under 
Webster's lead or that of anybody else. Indeed, I am to 
have a vicarious punishment and take the fall which was 
arranged for him. As I had originally purposed quitting 
Washington next March, it matters little. But I grieve for 
the good old cause, wounded in the house of its friends, — 
by what agencies and influences history will pronounce. I 
grieve for the good old Commonwealth, which seems likely 
to be the subject of that sort of reform which was practised 
by 'certain daughters of antiquity upon their aged parent. 
You remember the old story of their cutting him to pieces 
and boiling him in a caldron, to make him young again. 

1 The ablest defence of the Massachusetts Coalition is to be found in 
Henry Wilson's " Rise and Fall of the Slave Power; " the most effective 
exposure of it in an Address to the People by the Whig Members of the 
Legislature in 1851, written by Benjamin R. Curtis, afterward a Justice 
of the Supreme Court of the United States. 



144 A MEMOIR OF 

[Dec. 11.] For the Massachusetts Legislature to do me 
justice would certainly be gratifying, but I do not think it 
would tempt me to stay here six years longer. One thing 
1 should like, — and that is, to be rightly understood on 
the vexed questions of the day. Never was there a time 
when moderate men were more liable to be misconstrued. 
Some of our own friends are in an inflammatory state of 
vigilance, and even agitation, upon all these matters. They 
must put down everybody who differs from them, or who 
does not keep silence when they cry 'hush.' In these 
momentous times, they are the most clamorous advocates of 
silence, the most belligerent champions of peace, and the most 
discordant defenders of harmony. * Si vis Jlere, fiendum est ' 
was a maxim of Horace and Quintilian, both for poets and 
orators. If you wish harmony, you must be harmonious. If 
you wish peace, you must not yourself quarrel. If you desire 
to stop agitation, you must lay your finger on your own 
lips. This is good philosophy in all ages. But certain of 
our great and small men seem not to think so, and are 
sounding their rams' horns in every direction, ostensibly to 
keep the Avails of Jericho standing, but in reality to signalize 
their own prowess. 

[Dec. 31.] Webster's Austrian manifesto is, in some re- 
spects, a grand paper ; though I think that if Great Britain 
had sent an agent to watch the progress of South Carolina 
Nullification, with a view to making a commercial treaty at 
the earliest moment, we should not have shrunk from 
denouncing him as a spy. Clay's opposition to the extra 
copies is the first symptom of the revival of the old rivalry. 
They are both again bent on being candidates , — not remem- 
bering that candidates are not always Presidents. Webster's 
New Englander was a rouser, and in his best style of after- 
dinner oratory ; but I should have liked it better if, this 
time, his Union safety-valve had been shut off. So ends 
1850. Another hour will bring us to a new figure in the 
units' place. Who can say what is in store for us in the 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 145 

coming year, or whether its numerals shall be inscribed on 
our official or on our personal tombstones? The readiness 
is all. 

[Jan. 12, 1851.] I agree with you in distrusting the sincer- 
ity of Caleb Gushing, who is probably only possuming. If I 
had the privilege of naming a Free-Soil successor, it would be 
Samuel Hoar, who is the most respectable man of his party. 
Morton, or Mills, too, I could cheerfully make way for. Even 
S. C. Phillips, or Mann, would not nauseate me. But, I 
confes s, my stomach re volts Jlrom Sumner. At any "rate, 
whatever is done or left undone, I hope the short-term 
vacancy will soon be filled. I sit daily, like Damocles at the 
feast, with the sword suspended by a hair above my head. 
The sooner it falls, the better. 

[Jan. 19.] The Baltimore 'Sun' says, that as my recent 
votes are precisely what Sumner's would have been, the 
substitution of Sumner for Winthrop is not so much to be 
dreaded ! Webster, too, criticises my action in voting to 
refer John P. Hale's petitions to the Judiciary Committee ; 
but my belief is that by laying them on the table we should 
only have given rise to fruitless agitation. . . . B. R. Curtis 
has been here, and dined with me, when I strongly advised 
postponing the long-term vacancy until next winter. As our 
Legislature is now constituted, and after the developments 
of corruption and bargaining which have been witnessed, 
nobody can be elected without being involved in a suspicion 
of having ploughed witli another man's heifer. Boutwell's 
message is well written, and more conservative than I had 
expected. He means to be Governor next year, and I dare 
say will be. Since writing the above, I attended morning 
service at the Capitol, to hear the famous Dr. Hawks. He 
preached a 'Union' sermon, powerful in parts, but interceding 
for the Union as if it were on the very verge of dissolution ; 
and now, I suppose, he will claim the credit of having saved 
it. The mischief of all this is, that at a moment when there 
is really no danger, great as it may have been, we are exhaust- 

10 



146 A MEMOIR OF 

ino- our pathos to such a degree that when the next serious 
cause for alarm arises we shall be mute and empty. 

[Jan. 31.] The 30th of January is memorable in English 
history as the day of the ' Execution of the Blessed Martyr,' 
otherwise Charles I. It will be memorable in my private 
calendar as the clay when a corrupt Coalition put a not 
unwelcome end to my Congressional career. Precedents 
oblige me not to leave Massachusetts without representation, 
so here I sit in the Senate waiting for Rantoul's arrival. 
Do you remember, ever so long ago, in the days when he 
and I used to hammer one another in the Legislature, how I 
once called him in debate ' a little Matador e, shaking his red 
flag in my face ' ? And now he comes to oust me from my 
curule chair. You do not always appreciate my puns, but 
if I dared assimilate myself to an eagle, I might suggest a 
passable one : — 

' An Eagle, towering in his pride of place, 
Was by a mousing (Rant) owl hawked at and killed.' 

During this last session Mr. Winthrop's speeches 
related to fiscal and other questions which need not 
be described. He left the Senate on the 7th of Febru- 
ary, but did not immediately break up his establish- 
ment in Washington. The long-term vacancy not 
having been filled, he found himself still a candidate, 
though with no expectation of proving a successful 
one. It was not until the 24th of April that the pro- 
tracted contest in the Legislature came to an end, the 
twenty-sixth and final ballot having been as follows : 

"Whole number of votes cast . . . . . . 384 

Necessary to a choice 193 

Charles Sumner (Coalition) 193 

Robert C. Winthrop (Whig) 166 

Scattering 25 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 147 

[Feb. 17.] You see there has been a rumpus and a riot in 
Boston, an escape from the Marshal, etc. It is lamentable to 
have such a triumph given to Nullification and Rebellion, yet, 
I confess, I never believed that Union meetings and all that 
sort of thing were going to cure the deep-seated disaffection 
which the Fugitive Law has engendered. 

[March 24.] The newspapers having hailed my return 
home as ' a plain Republican citizen after so many years' ser- 
vice in the public councils,' Choate characteristically greeted 
me with the remark that he could not see that I was any 
plainer than before. Franklin Dexter wanted to get up a 
public dinner, but I would not hear of it. I have, however, 
consented to sit for my bust. 

[May 3.] Morey l and other friends wish to run me for 
Governor in the autumn, a sort of rallying of the Whigs for 
the redemption of the Commonwealth under my lead. I do 
not altogether fancy the plan, for although I would back my- 
self for a 20,000 plurality, yet our Massachusetts law requires 
a majority over all others, failing which, the election goes 
to the Legislature, where my chances would be dubious. 
Aside from this, with my present habits, the office would have 
no charms. To have been Governor of Massachusetts, at an 
interval of more than two hundred years after my great 
ancestor, would be a pleasant historical coincidence ; but to 
be tethered to a little round of petty duties, daily drudgery 
in the council-chamber, riding on big horses, sitting in big 
chairs, and making big and little speeches all over the Com- 
monwealth, would now be distasteful, if not irksome, to me. 
... A story went the rounds here a week or two ago, that 
Clay had openly said in Washington, that he saw ' nothing to 
choose between Mr. Winthrop and Mr. Sumner.' Now, that 
Clay may have unkindly remembered my vote against his 
Compromise is eminently probable, — that he and other 
Southern friends regretted much of my course in the Senate 

i Hon. George Morey, long chairman of the Whig State Central 
Committee. 



148 A MEMOIR OF 

is certain, — but that he seriously said what is reported I am 
slow to believe, and I wish you would confidentially ascertain 
what he did say. 1 I dare say that both Clay and Webster 
suspected me of having used my influence as Speaker to get 
Taylor nominated. I did no such thing, but scrupulously 
abstained from any interference ; though when the nomination 
was made, and still more when Taylor was fairly elected, I 
felt bound to support him and his policy so far as I conscien- 
tiously could. I stood by him living, and could see nothing 
in his death to make me change my ground. Hence my 
opposition to Clay's bill. 

[June 14.] Our Boston men keep the incense burning 
under Webster's nose with more than the assiduity of vestal 
virgins. A few months ago they were satisfied with a position 
of defence, but they now assume the attack and are for driving 
others to the wall. Such a course can only end by damaging 
the party irretrievably. What steps John Davis and others 
will take, I do not yet know, but I shall not long submit in 
silence to such insinuations as are made ; though they come 
from hangers-on and underlings, whose names you never 
heard of. There is, besides, a fellow who writes Boston 
letters to the New York ' Herald,' containing malicious fabri- 
cations, which are apparently concocted for the purpose of 
sowing dissensions among Whigs to the profit of their 
opponents,. 

[July 28.] Crittenden has been on a visit to me and we 
have had much interesting conversation about public affairs, 
of which I shall have a good deal to tell you when we meet. 
... I am somewhat puzzled about my gubernatorial candi- 
dacy, which some Websterites are openly opposing, the 
' Courier ' proclaiming that I have not a particle of popu- 
larity about me ! Morey, on the other hand (whose position 
and experience render him a judge), says that I am the only 
man upon whom the Convention could possibly unite at the 

1 Mr. Clay denied having said anything of the kind. The remark 
was traced to Senator Foote of Mississippi. 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 149 

outset, and the only one who would have the slightest chance 
of election. I would give much for a long talk with Webster, 
to know precisely how he feels, if he chose to tell me. 
Letter-writing is of little use in such cases. My own incli- 
nation is not to seem to dodge a downfall, or evade another 
defeat, by declining to run, if my friends urge it. The party 
has done much for me in the past, and I must do what I can 
for it now. I need not stand a second year. 

[Newport, Aug. 11.] Judge Dayton is here. He saw at Wor- 
cester both John Davis and Levi Lincoln, who told him that 
the opposition to me was factitious and feeble. At Nahant he 
met Frank Gray, who told him Webster was in favor of me 
for Governor above all other men ! On the heels of this 
appeared George T. Curtis, to whom I frankly complained of 
the way in which certain hangers-on of Webster had assailed 
me. He replied that he regretted it, that Webster had asked 
him to say to me that he was as much my friend as ever, but 
that he doubted the expediency of running me for Governor 
for a couple of years, for the reason that it might have a had 
effect on the South, 'particularly in Georgia. This reference to 
Georgia I thought a little comical, as Toombs is engaged in 
supporting a Democrat for Governor there, the local Whig 
party being practically disbanded. I told Curtis I would 
consider the subject, but that the message should have come 
earlier, that I was partly committed, etc. I think I shall hold 
my tongue and let things take their course. Massachusetts 
Whigs can surely nominate whom they please in a bye-year 
without consulting Southern opinion. 1 

[Sept. 29.] We found at Lowell, instead of a cattle-show, 
a sort of miniature World's Fair. So I left out all my talk 
about bullocks and manure, and substituted a few common- 
places about Arts and Manufactures. Everett made a beauti- 
ful speech, with perhaps a little too much Latin for his 

1 The Whig State convention of 1851 was held at Springfield on the 
11th of September. Upon the first ballot for Governor, Mr. Winthrop 
received 811 votes, to 210 for Samuel H. W alley, the Webster candidate. 



150 A MEMOIR OF 

audience. There is nobody like him for such occasions. He 
shines out velut inter ignes lima minores. Not that I mean 
to imply that he is given to moonshine, for he is really 
splendid and shines with no borrowed light. 

[Oct. 26.] I sent you my Mechanic Charitable Address. 
I have made three or four more, Agricultural and otherwise, 
but nothing political. ' These little things are great to little 
men.' From all I can learn, Fillmore is the favorite of the 
Southern Whigs, but if you read your New York ' Herald ' 
duly, you will see that Crittenden spent a week with me for 
the purpose of negotiating matters for Scott! The leading 
Free-Soil organ here says I am very ambitious, a mere 
politician, and ready to make any sacrifice for advancement, 
but if the writer only knew how sick I am of the emptiness 
and distraction of public life, he would give me credit for less 
management. 1 Morey is still sanguine about the election, but 
Clifford is a perfect Cassandra. For myself, I am utrumque 
paratus. There are so many things which I wish to do, but 
which I cannot do if I am chosen, and so many things which 
I don't wish to do, but which I must do if I serve, that the 
pros and eons have a tendency to leave me in a state of 
apathy. 

[Nov. 20.] My vote was a glorious one, 8,000 more than 
Briggs got last year, and nearly 4,000 more than Taylor 
received three years ago, — and this in the largest vote ever 
thrown in the State, and in spite of much lukewarmness, and 

1 The reference is to a leader in the Boston " Commonwealth " of Oct. 
25, 1851, dealing at length with Mr. Winthrop's career, and describing him 
as a man " whose sympathies are with the rich, — with the money power ; 
his aim, like theirs, political success as an end, not as a means ; his 
method of gaining it, like theirs, tortuous, uncandid, false ; his principles, 
like theirs, sitting loosely on him, enabling him always to present that 
front which circumstances may seem to demand for the moment. He 
never knew what it was to earn his own bread, and he is far removed 
from any knowledge of, or sympathy with, the great mass of the com- 
munity whose lot is so different. He is thus almost the only man of any 
note in New England who is a politician by profession." 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 151 

probably some defection, in a quarter you wot of. Indeed, 
but for the unaccountable loss of Lowell, we should have 
controlled the General Court. My plurality over Boutwell 
exceeds 20,000, over Palfrey nearly 36,000 ; but, with our 
majority system, a coalition can elect a minority candidate 
in the Legislature, which will probably prove the case in 
January. My friends say 'better luck next time,' but 
between ourselves there is not likely to be any next time for 
me. I am tired of it all and mean to stand aside for several 
years, if not permanently. Clifford would make an excellent 
Whig Governor. So would Charles Hudson or Julius Rock- 
well. I might easily name others. Say nothing of this, as 
it will not be made public for some time. . . . People here 
are, as usual, all agog for making Webster President, but 
you and I think alike as to his chances. I am ready to vote 
for him, for Fillmore, for Scott, or for any other good man 
who may receive the nomination, and I have as little fancy 
as you for Free-Soil alliances ; but we are doomed to defeat 
under almost any imaginable circumstances. It looks to me 
as if the Democrats were as sure to carry the next general 
election, as the seasons are to roll round. Though not tech- 
nically a Webster Whig, I would have given much to have 
seen Webster President before he died, but he will now 
never get even as many electoral votes as he got in 1836. 
Strange that so great a man should occasionally be so blind to 
political situations ; besides which, I have some doubt if his 
life is worth a year's insurance. 

The story above alluded to, that Mr. Winthrop had 
co-operated with John J. Crittenden in trying to 
effect the nomination of General Scott, together with 
another story (not improbably from the same source) 
that he had strongly recommended running Fillmore in 
preference to W r ebster, found its way from time to time 
into the newspapers in the winter of 1852, sometimes 



152 A MEMOIR OF 

accompanied by the insinuation that Mr. Winthrop, 
although fully consulted by Mr. Webster before his 7th 
of March speech, had purposely left his great leader 
in the lurch. Mr. Winthrop was much stung by this 
charge, but preferred not to take any notice of it, until 
he saw in a New York paper a report of some remarks 
of Mr. Webster, in which no names were mentioned, 
but which might have been construed as giving a sort 
of color to what had been said. Under date of March 
15, 1852, he accordingly wrote Mr. Webster : — 

I have no disposition to draw you into private or public 
controvers} r , but I must be perfectly candid in saying to you 
that, in answer to frequent questions at the time and since, 
whether I was consulted by Mr. Webster on the subject of 
his speech before it was delivered, or whether he communi- 
cated to me in advance his views and purposes in making 
it, — I have uniformly replied in the negative. On the other 
hand, I had many reasons for supposing, when I myself made 
a speech just a fortnight previously, on the 21st of February, 
that, in taking distinct ground in favor of General Taylor's 
platform, I was expressing myself in conformity to your 
views, and that I should be found acting where I had always 
been proud to act, under your lead. 1 I cannot but think that, 
if the report of your remarks be correct, you are under some 
misapprehension as to what occurred before, and what after, 
the 7th of March, 1850. 

A temporary absence from Washington and a pres- 
sure of public business prevented Mr. Webster from 
replying until April 8, when he wrote : — 

" It is certainly true that you were not consulted upon the 
subject of my speech before it was delivered, and that I did 
not communicate to you in advance my views and purposes 

1 See ante, pp. 110-111. 



ROBERT C. WIXTHROP. 153 

in making it. At the same time, I am at a loss to know what 
reason you had for supposing, on the 21st of February, that I 
was in favor of General Taylor's platform. Before that time, 
and in a long conversation with General Taylor, — the only 
one I ever had with him on any matter of importance, — I 
distinctly stated to him that I did not at all concur with him 
in his views ; that I was for one general and final adjustment 
of all the questions ; and that, as for the admission of Cali- 
fornia, leaving all other questions equally important to be 
discussed and quarrelled about thereafter, I thought such a 
proceeding very likely to lead to civil war. It gave me 
infinite pain to differ with you, and the rest of my colleagues, 
on that exigent and critical occasion. Certainly I doubted 
not the patriotism and good purposes of any of you. But the 
path of my own duties seemed plain, and I was ready to tread 
it at all hazards. The consequence was that I found myself 
engaged in a controversy of great moment, to be fought on a 
field in which I had neither a leader nor a follower from 
among my own immediate friends. 

" And now let me add, my dear sir, that there is no man in 
whose public career I have heretofore taken more interest and 
concern than in yours. I have known and appreciated your 
intelligence, your patriotism, your fitness for high public em- 
ployment. I have ever spoken of you as one from whom 
the country had much to expect, and I still cherish the 
fervent hope that you may yet enjoy in full measure the 
rich reward of public approbation for distinguished public 
services." 

Under date of April 14, Mr. Winthrop rejoined : — 

I thank you for the kind expressions with which your letter 
concludes. It is in vain for me to conceal that the tone of 
some of those in this quarter, who are supposed to enjoy your 
confidence, had conspired with other circumstances in leading 
me to doubt in what relation to you I was at liberty to class 



154 A MEMOIR OF 

myself. This must account for anything of unaccustomed 
formality in my last letter. I gladly accept the renewed 
assurance of your friendly regard. You must allow me to 
say, however, that there are still some points of difference 
between us in relation to the history of the past. My first 
impulse was to sit down and write you a full account of the 
reasons which I had for thinking that, on the 21st of Febru- 
ary, 1850, I was expressing your sentiments as well as my 
own. I had proposed also to state some facts and views 
which rendered it all but impossible that you could have 
entertained, at that time or for many weeks afterward, the 
strong and unqualified opinions as to the danger of adopting 
General Taylor's plan, which you now express. I am reluct- 
ant, however, to trouble you with any long statements or 
arguments upon a subject of no immediate practical interest, 
while you are so much occupied with official and professional 
duties. If the time should come when I should be in the way 
of meeting you personally on our old footing, and when you 
should be willing and disposed for a free conference upon 
those questions, I am certain I could remind you of circum- 
stances which, I dare say, left less impression on your mind 
than upon my own, but which were hardly susceptible of 
misconstruction. 

The only political speech of any importance made by 
Mr. Winthrop in 1852 was on the 29th of June in 
Faneuil Hall, when he presided at a meeting to ratify 
the nomination of General Scott for the Presidency by 
the General Convention of the Whig party at Baltimore, 
and when, in their bitter disappointment, many Webster 
Whigs had threatened to bolt the ticket. I quote but a 
few sentences : — 

We have come together as Whigs, — not merely Boston 
Whigs, and Massachusetts Whigs, but national Whigs, — 
members of a party coextensive with our whole widespread 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 155 

Union. We are here not forgetting that we have principles 
to maintain, which are far above all consideration of persons ; 
that we have a cause and a country to support and uphold, 
independently of all questions about individual pretensions 
or preferences. We all know that if Daniel Webster had 
been nominated by the National Convention, and if this 
meeting had been summoned to respond to that nomination, 
this hall, capacious and elastic as it is, would not have con- 
tained the multitudes who would have crowded and thronged 
its portals. We should all have been here, and the ' Old 
Cradle ' would have rocked again, as in its infancy, with 
your exulting shouts. And shall it be said, for a moment, 
that the Whigs of Suffolk were only true to their colors when 
their own wishes were gratified, and when their own candi- 
dates were successful ? Shall it be said of us, as it was once 
said of ancient Rome, that Octavius had a party, and Antony 
a party, but that the Republic had no party ? I observe that 
when a procession of Baltimore Whigs meet your own proces- 
sion of delegates at the gates of the Monumental city, they 
marched beneath a banner bearing this inscription : ' We go 
for the nominee.' That escort was accepted ; and that ban- 
ner was not repudiated. And upon the walls of the vast 
Assembly-room where the delegates were convened there was 
inscribed, if I mistake not, our old watchword of victory in 
1840, ' The union of the Whigs for the sake of the Union.' 
All this, I am persuaded, was no mere empty and delusive 
show. It meant something. And the meaning was nothing 
else, and could have been nothing else, than that which our 
State Convention and our Legislative Convention, and all 
our local conventions, had previously declared, — that we 
intended to abide by the decision of the tribunal to which we 
had appealed, and to give our support to the candidates 
which it should select. Shall we break our swords and 
abandon our colors and go over to the enemy, because we 
cannot have the precise leader of our choice to conduct us to 
victory ? Shall we abandon the cause of American industry, 



156 A MEMOIR OF 

of river and harbor improvements, and of a sound pacific 
foreign policy, out of any mere personal griefs? Shall we 
overturn the coach because we cannot have our own favorite 
driver, or even because we may not exactly fancy some of 
our fellow-passengers ? For myself I can only say that, let 
who will be on the box or who will get up behind, let who will 
be inside and who outside, as long as it keeps along on the 
straight road and in the well-worn ruts of the Constitution, 
I am for holding fast to the good old Whig Union line. . . . 
Let us then take the first step to confirm and carry out the 
acts to which we ourselves have been parties. Let us prove 
that no degree or depth of personal disappointment can pre- 
vent us from keeping our [(lighted troth with the Whigs of 
other States, or from doing unto others what we should have 
expected and demanded of others to do unto us. 

A few weeks later, by an appointment of the Alumni 
of Harvard, he delivered at their decennial celebration, 
July 22, 1852, an elaborate address, entitled, The Ob- 
ligations and Responsibilities of Educated Men in the 
use of the tongue and of the pen. 

[Nahant, July 23.] Thank Heaven, no orator is expected 
to deliver two Alumni Addresses. Mine was on the easel a 
long time and I gave it a daub now and then, but somehow 
or other the colors had a tendency to dry on the palette. It 
has some tolerable passages, and some good sober truths, 
which the times require. The height of the pulpit and the 
immediate proximity of our venerable Chief Justice (who 
occasionally purred applause) interfered somewhat with my 
gesticulation ; and then, too, I am not accustomed to be 
hampered by a manuscript, which the length of this produc- 
tion necessitated for part of the time. Charles G. Loring 
was kind enough to say I had done more good than had been 
done by any address at Harvard for thirty years, while 
Everett was overwhelming in his approbation ; but one must 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 157 

deduct a large percentage from the congratulations of friends. 1 
In spite of remonstrances from Morey, John C. Gray, and 
others, I adhere to the purpose I privately expressed many 
months ago of not running again for Governor, though I am 
assured there is little or no doubt that we shall this year 
control the Legislature. Aside from my weariness of politics, 
I am for harmony in the party. The disappointment of the 
Websterites is disposed to exhibit itself in vengeance upon 
everybody who dares intimate that it was anything less than 
treason to say that Fillmore would have made a good candidate, 
or that Scott is a good one. If I really wanted the office, I 
would defy this intolerance and take the stump, but I grow 
more and more enamoured of private life and see various 
channels in which I may be useful. Give my cordial remem- 
brances to the President and tell him that his course since 
the nomination has given him a fresh hold on the hearts of 
his friends. No man has so much right to complain of the 
result as he, but he has proved that he knows how to bear 
the downs, as well as the ups, of political fortune. 

Mr. Winthrop's withdrawal excited much comment. 
The Boston correspondent of the Springfield " Republi- 
can" wrote as follows, under date of Aug. 9, 1852 : 

" Mr. Winthrop's action has stirred the political waters. Not 
unexpected to the knowing ones, it took the public at large 
by surprise. He was looked upon as the next Governor of 
Massachusetts, as but for his imperative declination, his 

1 No such allowance need be made in the case of opponents. A leader 
in the Boston " Commonwealth " of July 27, 1852, says : " We have read 
Mr. Winthrop's Oration before the Alumni of Harvard with a feeling of 
very agreeable surprise. In power and beauty, in elevation of thought 
and principle, in force and grace of expression, it will take its place in the 
foremost ranks of American eloquence. No competent person can read 
it, and honestly deny Mr. Winthrop's claim to as high a position among 
our orators and writers as is held by any other living man. It is masterly 
in style, and glows throughout with what we are ready to accept, for the 
most part, as sound, patriotic, and truly Christian sentiment." 



158 A MEMOIR OF 

nomination by the Whig Convention would have been almost 
an act of spontaneous unanimity, and his subsequent election 
quite equally a matter of course. For it must be impossible 
that the Coalition, hoary with political sin and inconsistency, 
though but two years in existence, should longer blot the 
fame of Massachusetts and be a stench in the nostrils of the 
nation. Mr. Winthrop does not decline because he would 
not like to be Governor. This is an ambition worthy of and 
honorable to him. But he prefers the harmony and the unity 
of the party to his own advancement. He prefers, too, not 
to be the object of a rancorous spite and a party jealousy, 
that, because he could not agree to follow the lead of some 
of liis old political associates, has been poured out upon him 
during the past year and has threatened to pursue him still 
more bitterly. Mr. Winthrop is no political idol of mine. I 
have differed from him on questions of policy in relation to 
men and measures, — I think he has made mistakes in his 
political course, — but that he is a true, staunch, reliable, 
devoted Whig, firm and inflexible in his devotion to the 
essentials of the Whig creed, broad and generous in his 
nationality, yialding and sacrificing in his personal feelings 
for the sake of the greater good, — that he is all this, and 
that he deserves well of the Whigs of Massachusetts and of 
the Union, I do confidently assert and insist. . . . What part 
Mr. Winthrop took in securing General Scott's nomination, I 
know not. I doubt if it was active or large ; but, nevertheless, 
he seemed to be the mark against which the sadly disappointed 
feelings of many of Mr. Webster's supporters here turned with 
an idea of ' revenge,' which appears to me as senseless and illib- 
eral as it is unjust. Out of Boston scarcely any man would 
command more votes than Mr. Winthrop, while here in Boston 
his generous conduct and manly sacrifice will have the effect 
to strengthen and reunite the old Whig phalanx." 

Extracts from Mr. Winthrop' s private letters are 
here resumed : — 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 159 

[Sept. 7.] In an evil hour I some time ago consented to 
discourse at length upon American Agriculture at Taunton, 
on the 18th of next month. 1 The heat has caused me to 
defer preparation for it, and I am now repenting my good 
nature. I gave a note to you to a representative of the 
Boston ' Atlas,' who visits Washington in hopes to have the 
proscription of that paper removed. You know all about this 
business. The ' Atlas ' is a thoroughgoing Whig paper, ener- 
getic and impulsive. Not always prudent, but always prompt. 
Not always cautious, but always courageous. Many things 
in it have at times displeased many of its friends, but, on the 
whole, no paper has been more devoted to the Whig cause. 
It did not cry Shibboleth to the Compromise, nor Amen to 
the 7th of March, yet it has given manly support to the 
Administration, and is uncompromising in its adherence to 
the Baltimore Convention and its candidates. Webster took 
away his patronage and gave it to the ' Courier,' and its editors 
now feel that an occasional official notice in its columns 
would do away with the impression that the Administration 
is throwing its weight into the scale of the Webster sizzle in 
this quarter, and would give emphasis to the ' Atlas ' in sus- 
taining Scott. It is too important a paper to be put under a 
ban. ... I don't think you quite do justice to ' Uncle Tom's 
Cabin.' Greatly as political agitation of the slavery question 
is to be deprecated, ought there not, now and then, to be 
something said in a literary or moral way, to keep alive a 

1 Mr. Winthrop was long a Trustee of the Massachusetts Society for 
the Promotion of Agriculture, of which his father had been president. 
His agricultural tastes were acquired when a small boy on Naushon 
Island, then the property of a maternal uncle of his, and where he often 
went for weeks at a time. Sheep-farming was then practised there on 
a considerable scale, and Mr. Winthrop's earliest suit of clothes was made 
from the Island wool. These leanings were further developed by his first 
wife's having inherited the Gardner farm in Wenham, where during her 
life he habitually spent a part of each summer. His subsequent mar- 
riages associated him, first, with a farm in Dorchester, now built over, 
and later with a country seat in Brookline, where he much resided for 
many years, and took constant pleasure in its horticultural attractions. 



160 A MEMOIR OF 

proper state of sentiment in regard to tlie real character of 
the institution ? The book may be a good deal exaggerated in 
some parts, but I think it exhibits some of the lights as well 
as shades of slavery, and does great justice to some features of 
Southern character. It will do no harm to inculcate in the 
young Southern mind (which I think it will reach) a feeling 
of impatience at the idea that slavery is to be perpetual. You 
must not judge of the work only by the ravings of Anti- 
slavery Conventions. 

[Oct. 25.] I returned from my sister's at Augusta just in 
time to meet the appalling announcement of Webster's immi- 
nent peril. Last night I dreamed that I was exchanging 
with him renewed assurances of mutual confidence and regard, 
but I awoke to the sound of minute-guns and tolling bells, 
which announced his end. It has affected me deeply. I 
could have cried about it all day with a good will, especially 
if my tears could have blotted out a few tilings from the 
eventful record which has just been closed. What a man he 
might have been ! Yet let us not do injustice, or forget what 
a man he was. Mighty in intellect, majestic in form, un- 
tiring in energy, — the impress of greatness was upon him all 
over in larger characters than have appeared anywhere within 
our region and within our day. One could never see him, or 
hear him, without thinking of Hamlet's apostrophe to man. 
' How noble in reason ! how infinite in faculty ! in apprehen- 
sion how like a god! ' It is twenty-four years since I 
entered his law-office, and until last year, rarely a month has 
passed without my being more or less associated with him. 
He has not always treated me as I could have wished, or as I 
think I deserved. I owe him nothing, though perhaps I have 
to thank his friends for my defeat for Governor. But I 
rejoice to think he has never wanted a good turn from me, 
whenever I had a real opportunity of doing him one. I 
should be willing to compare notes to-day with the most 
forward of those who have been seeking fame from his 
friendship, or making capital out of his infirmities, or stealing 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 161 

notoriety from his very death-bed, — as to the amount of real 
service which has been rendered him by us respectively dur- 
ing nearly a quarter of a century past. I have always made 
great allowances for any expressions of irritation he may 
latterly have let fall about my course, at moments when he 
was ill and disappointed ; but I am, as you know, a sensitive 
man, and the malice of some of his retainers has galled me 
deeply. Enough, perhaps too much, of this. 

[Nov. 29.] This will be handed you by my particular 
friend Clifford, who will be chosen Governor of Massachu- 
setts as soon as our Legislature meets. Let him know some 
of the secrets which you may not be disposed to trust on 
paper. I was profoundly astonished by the telegraphic gossip 
that I was a candidate for the State Department. Fillmore 
knows how I feel about this ; and if any politicians in this 
quarter pressed my name, it was without my knowledge and 
against my wishes. I fully supposed Crittenden would suc- 
ceed Webster, and there are reasons why this might have 
been the wisest choice ; but Everett is admirably qualified to 
finish up Webster's work and was cut out for a minister of 
Foreign Affairs. You will have noted that I headed the 
Scott ticket in this State. His defeat has been laughably 
overwhelming, but I rejoice that his vote in the Electoral 
College will be divided between two sections of the Union, 
Vermont and Massachusetts standing shoulder to shoulder 
with Tennessee and Kentucky. Let us hope we shall learn 
a little wisdom during the next four years. 

[Jan. 13, 1853.] So our friend Mrs. says I am 'repin- 
ing at my political reverses.' I could make a shrewd guess 
at the source of that suggestion. Oddly enough your letter 
came when a political prize was again within my reach. 
John Davis's term expiring in March, and he having fully 
decided to retire, I was strongly urged to allow myself to be 
put in nomination and I was assured that this time my elec- 
tion would be certain, in spite of some opposition from 
Webster Whigs in the Convention. I confess I was a little 

n 



162 A MEMOIR OF 

tempted, but on thinking the whole matter carefully over, I 
determined to adhere to my original decision to eschew all can- 
didacies for some years to come, if not permanently. I have 
no longer a house in Washington, and I have not the faintest 
wish to go back there, save on an occasional visit to you or 
some personal friend. There are all sorts of reasons, domes- 
tic and otherwise, which dispose me to remain quietly here. 
Nevertheless, I would go if I really felt I could accomplish 
anything ; but what good could I do, with Frank Pierce in 
the White House and a democratic majority in both branches ? 
My votes and my speeches would fail, as heretofore, to satisfy 
extremists, and I should be at continual variance with my 
own colleague. It is understood that Everett is not unwilling 
to accept, and he is a man upon whom we can all agree. 
Whether he will long fancy such a post, in the present con- 
dition of the country, I have my doubts. I will not affect to 
deny that, after an absence of eleven winters, Boston occa- 
sionally seems a trifle narrow and a trifle humdrum. The 
gatherings of our Historical Society, of the vestry of Trinity 
Church and other local bodies, are perhaps a little tame to 
one who has passed so many years at work on the affairs of 
the Nation. But I am getting thoroughly accustomed to it 
all, and I see many ways in which I can be useful, to say 
nothing of the opportunity of undertaking some long-post- 
poned biographical work, and freedom to go to Europe when 
it suits me. I enclose my letter to Judge Warren 1 declining 
to stand. 

VIII. 

Although Mr. Winthrop was now, by his own choice, 
not in what is technically known as " public life," — 
the tenure of, or candidacy for, a National or State office, 
— it w r as in no degree his intention to hold his tongue on 

1 Our former associate, Charles H. Warren, then President of 
Massachusetts State Senate. 



ROBERT C. WIXTHROP. 163 

the great questions of the day ; and though, in the course 
of the next twelve years, his various public utterances 
gradually assumed more and more a historical, educa- 
tional, philanthropic, or religious character, yet when 
properly urged, or when he felt it to be a duty, he had 
no hesitation in expressing his political views, some- 
times in a platform speech, sometimes in a published 
letter. Thus, on the 28th of September, 1853, in pre- 
siding over the Whig State Convention at Fitchburg, he 
indulged in some plain-spoken criticism of the Massa- 
chusetts Coalition, in a speech from which I quote a 
single passage : — 

I am not so bigoted a partisan as to grudge to our adver- 
saries an occasional possession of power, either in the nation 
at large, or in our own State. I am willing to admit that 
the revolutions of parties in a free country are sometimes 
productive of positive good, and that the rolling wheel of 
political fortune is sometimes a wheel of progress and reform. 
And, let me add, I am always ready to welcome a true pro- 
gress and a just reform, from whatever quarter it may come, 
and by whatever rotation it may be accomplished. But I 
confess, when I reflect on the doubtful and dangerous coun- 
sels to which our country has been recently committed ; when 
I think of the perils which may be at this moment impending 
over our foreign and domestic relations, from the extravagant 
and reckless policy of some of those who occupy the high 
places of the nation ; and when, still more, I contemplate the 
injury which has been inflicted upon the character of our own 
Massachusetts, as a State, and the even deeper and more per- 
manent injury which is just ready to be inflicted on our own 
Massachusetts' Constitution, — I cannot help deploring the 
day which introduced divisions and distractions into the ranks 
of a party, which ought to have saved, which might have 
saved, both State and Nation. I cannot help deploring the 



164 A MEMOIR OF 

day which saw that party throw away the opportunity of 
saving anything, in order to indulge in mere personal dissen- 
sions and family feuds. 

A few weeks earlier, on the 6th of September, he had 
delivered an address at Groton, in Connecticut, at the 
celebration of the seventy-second anniversary of the Rev- 
olutionary tragedy of Groton Heights, and a few weeks 
later, on the 11th of November, he made an extempore 
speech at a "Faneuil Hall Rally' of the Whigs of 
Boston, in opposition to the proposed new State Con- 
stitution. 1 On the 29th of the last-named month he de- 
livered, by request of the Massachusetts Charitable 
Mechanic Association, the opening lecture of a course 
of lectures upon the Application of Science to Art, 
entitling it " Archimedes and Franklin." Towards the 
close of it he strongly urged the erection of a statue of 
Benjamin Franklin in the place of his birth, an appeal 
which resulted in the existing statue in front of the 
City Hall, with the design and execution of which Mr. 
Winthrop had much to do, and the address at the un- 
veiling of which was pronounced by him on the 17th of 
September, 1856. 2 

On the 21st of December, 1853, he delivered, before 
the Mercantile Library Association of Boston, a lecture 
upon Algernon Sidney, one of his favorite characters in 
history ; and on the 2 3d of February, 1854, he made in 
Faneuil Hall, at short notice, a speech on the Repeal of 

1 The state of his health had obliged him to decline serving as a dele- 
gate to the Constitutional Convention. 

2 A former benefactor of this Society, Thomas Dowse, so greatly ad- 
mired this lecture of Mr. Winthrop's, that he forthwith proceeded to 
put up at his own expense a monument to Franklin in Mount Auburn 
Cemetery. 



ROBERT C. WIXTHROP. 165 

the Missouri Compromise, earnestly deprecating what 
he considered the wanton violation of that compact. 

[Oct. 14, 1853.] Thanks for your compliments about my 
Fitchburg speech. It is, however, one of the last flickerings 
of an expiring flame. ' I know not where is that Promethean 
fire that can that light relume,' and I may add that, if I did 
know, I should hesitate before applying the match. So far as 
many of the Boston delegation were concerned, my success was 
wrung from reluctant ears. Conscience-Whig and Free-Soil 
attacks were bad enough, but they were open ; the whispered 
insinuations of some of the Webster clique are less endurable. 
They seem to consider injustice to me the only acceptable 
offering to the manes of their great idol. By the way, apro- 
pos of Free-Soilers, only think of John P. Hale 's preparing 
his last evening's speech in my library. He could find a full 
set of the ' Congressional Globe ' nowhere else. My sense of 
hospitality prevented me from hinting to him that I thought 
I had better deserved a medal than he for efforts for 
Colored Seamen. 

[Feb. 24, 1854.] I was somewhat reluctant to take part 
in yesterday's meeting, and only consented on the express 
understanding that doubtful points were to be avoided. Some 
of the speakers were disposed to glorify the Compromise of 
1850, and I was forced to put in a caveat. You would have 
been edified if you had heard the applause when I alluded to 
my own course. Douglas has done a foolish thing, and it 
looks to me as if a black squall of the worst kind was coming 
up, which will, to say the least, throw a cloud over some 
presidential prospects. The only hope of doing anything is 
by a moderate and conciliatory tone. Seward's speech is able 
and discreet. Sumner's has, to my mind, so much tinsel and 
tawdry rhetoric that I have not yet waded through it, but 
there is unquestionably matter in it. If James A. Pearce 
could have seen his way clear to vindicate adherence to the 
Missouri Compromise (which seems to me little more than 



1G6 A MEMOIR OF 

the dictate of common honesty) he would take a stand at 
the North such as no other Southern man has enjoyed. I 
have no belief that slavery will make much headway in Kansas 
or Nebraska. But antislavery will make a prodigious head- 
way in New England if such unwarrantable glosses are to 
prevail as to the construction of the Compromises of 1850. 
If I could have prescribed a recipe for reinflating Free-Soilism 
and Abolitionism, which had collapsed all over the country, 
I should have singled out this precise potion from the whole 
materia medica of political quackery. 

[April 24.] I was the sole representative of the old mess at 
John Davis's funeral. There was a lamentable lack of attend- 
ance from Boston, and the Legislature treated it with scant 
courtesy. He was an able, faithful, disinterested public 
servant, not wanting in sagacity and shrewdness, but with 
that sort of wisdom which the good book says ' dwells with 
prudence.' Twenty years ago I was his aide-de-cam.p, and I 
was many years in Congress with him, where his sluggish 
temperament and seeming timidity sometimes disturbed me. 
Yet I believe that seeming timidity is often real boldness, 
and that his backwardness was the mere fault of his blood. He 
was a thoroughly honest man, and, upon the whole, I look 
back on his career and character with great respect and al- 
most reverence, regarding him as inferior to few of our Mas- 
sachusetts worthies of this century. His example was always 
good, and that gave effect to his precepts. There was a har- 
mony between his words and works, and both were pure and 
patriotic. 

[May 16.] Everett is looking wretchedly. When he told 
me privately of his contemplated resignation I remonstrated 
against his taking this step unless he really felt too ill to 
attend to his duties. Since then Abbott Lawrence has been 
here to say on behalf of the governor, 1 that if I would take 
Everett's place in the Senate, he would make out my com- 

1 Our former associate, Emory Washburn, was then governor. 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 167 

mission forthwith. I declined with thanks, but Lawrence 
presented so many reasons in favor of my going that I con- 
sented to take a day or two to consider it, and consulted 
Nathan and William Appleton, as well as Ephraim Peabody. 
The upshot was that my original decision was not shaken. 
Indeed, I feel even less disposed for the post now than when 
I withdrew my candidacy in January of last year. Had I 
then been willing, I should have had the sanction of the 
Legislature and could have stayed in Washington as many 
years of the full term as I might see fit. Were I now to go, 
I should be but a gubernatorial nominee for some eight 
months, with great uncertainty of being confirmed in the end. 
Moreover, I should go on when the battle is raging, in one of 
the hottest months of the summer, and with an obligation to 
meet the requisitions of an imperious and impatient public 
sentiment in regard to Nebraska, Cuba, and I know not what 
all. I doubt whether my health is strong enough for plun- 
ging into that Washington furnace and going through the 
rough and tumble of an exciting midsummer session, but I 
should be willing to risk it if I could really see a chance of 
doing anything effective in a good cause. I am satisfied, 
however, that neither votes nor voices can prevail against the 
foregone conclusions of presidential behests and party sub- 
serviency. If I were already there and in the seat, I should 
feel called on to stay and bide my fortune, but to go on vol- 
untarily under such circumstances is more than I can bring 
my mind to. If Everett cannot be persuaded to reconsider 
and go back, what is to be done ? My own opinion is that, 
in such case, it would be best to select some man out of 
Boston — some one who might not care to run next winter — 
say, for instance, Briggs (if he would take it), Levi Lincoln, 
Charles Hudson, Grinnell, or Julius Rockwell, — all good 
men and true. 

A few months later Mr. Winthrop received a very dif- 
ferent offer, and one which much astonished liim. Early 



168 A MEMOIR OF 

in September he was privately waited on by four persons 
of apparent respectability, none of whom he could re- 
member to have met before, who represented themselves 
as empowered by the Massachusetts branch of the new 
"Know Nothing Order" to propose that, if he would 
consent to a private initiation into one of their " Lodges," 
he should be guaranteed the leadership of their party 
in the State, an election for governor in November, with 
the reversion of a Senatorship. He at first suspected 
some mystification, but becoming satisfied that the over- 
tures were bona fide, he politely declined them, primarily 
on the ground that, from the very outset of his career, 
he had been opposed to secret political organizations, 
especially when based upon religion or race ; but adding 
that although defeated for governor and senator in 
1851, he had since good reason to consider both offices 
to have been within his reach, and had therefore no 
disposition at this late day to join a new party in order 
to obtain them. 

I wonder [he subsequently wrote] how much authority 
these mysterious visitants really had and how far they were 
in a position to carry out their promises. If it be true that 
they have enlisted Wilson, they are not unlikely to become a 
power. He is far too shrewd to allow himself to be made a 
catspaw. 1 

Among a variety of non-political speeches made by 
him about this time, an address at the semi-centennial 
celebration of the New York Historical Society, Nov. 20, 

1 It is perhaps unnecessary to mention that the Know-Nothing party 
swept Massachusetts in November, 1854, not merely electing their candi- 
dates for State offices, but sending Henry Wilson to the United States 
Senate in the following winter. 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 169 

1854, and one at the laying of the corner-stone of the 
Public Library of Boston, Sept. 17, 1855, may be alluded 
to in passing. He had been one of the earliest con- 
tributors of books to the last-named, and had consented, 
with some hesitation, to serve as chairman of a Board 
of Commissioners to erect a suitable building, a matter 
which occupied him a good deal for several years ; and 
although the architect selected by a majority of his 
colleagues was not the one he preferred, and the edifice 
when completed was not wholly to his taste, yet he 
quite enjoyed these unaccustomed duties, finding that 
they brought him into contact with persons he might 
not otherwise have known, several of whom he remem- 
bered with much pleasure in later life. He was then also 
serving a term as an Overseer of Harvard, and an elabo- 
rate Report made by him on the establishment of the 
Plummer Professorship of Christian Morals and the 
office of Preacher to the University was printed in 1855. 
In it he took occasion to emphasize his belief that " the 
worship of God is the first thing, and not the last thing, 
to be provided for in a great seminary of learning ; and 
the religious instructions of the Sabbath as much a 
part of any true system of education as the recitations 
and lectures of the week-day." In 1854 he was elected 
president of the Boston Provident Association, which 
had been founded, three years before, with a view of 
systematizing the charities of the city, and of endeavor- 
ing, by means of careful investigation, complete registra- 
tion, and co-operation with other agencies, to prevent 
private liberality from being misapplied. This led him 
to accept, some years later, the laborious post of Chair- 
man of the Board of Overseers of the Poor of Boston, 



170 A MEMOIR OF 

which he held a long time, taking a very active part in 
the administration and partial reorganization of that 
department of our municipal system. In April, 1855, 
he became president of the Massachusetts Historical 
Society, of which he had been elected a resident member 
so far back as 1839, and in which, from the first, he took 
a peculiar interest, partly because it is the oldest institu- 
tion of its kind in this country, partly because his father 
long presided over it, and partly because he considered 
its publications invaluable to students of New England 
history. Its senior member at the present day did not 
enter the Society until nearly five years after Mr. Win- 
throp assumed the presidency, and our published pro- 
ceedings are all that is left to bear testimony to the 
untiring diligence then displayed by him in improving 
the comfort of our surroundings, in promoting a more 
careful supervision of our books and manuscripts, in 
instilling new life into our meetings, and in gradually 
obtaining increased resources for our work. 

After describing the breaking up of the Know-Nothing 
party, as a national organization, in the summer of 
1855, Henry Wilson goes on to say : — 

" On the adoption of the Southern platform a conference 
was held between Mr. Wilson, Mr. Bowles of the ' Springfield 
Republican,' and Col. Ezra Lincoln. Mr. Bowles had been 
an earnest and effective Whig ; but he understood the pur- 
poses of those who had disrupted the American party, and 
was ready to unite with them in forming a party of freedom. 
Colonel Lincoln had been, too, one of the most earnest and 
sagacious leaders of the Whig party in Massachusetts. It 
was his judgment that the time had arrived for disbanding it, 
and for the formation of a new party, not only in Massachu- 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 171 

setts, but throughout the country, on the basis of the Repub- 
lican platform. Fully according in the sentiment as expressed 
by Mr. Wilson, that the time had come for combining the few 
thousand avowed Republicans, the anti-Nebraska Democrats, 
and antislavery ' Americans,' and that all that was necessary 
was for the Whigs to unite in the movement to control the 
policy of the State, they agreed that Mr. Winthrop was the 
man to take the lead in such an effort. Mr. Wilson urged 
these gentlemen to hasten home, see Mr. Winthrop, and urge 
upon him the necessity of prompt action. ' Tell him,' said 
Mr. Wilson, ' that we antislavery men want him and his 
friends to take the lead in forming a victorious Republican 
party in Massachusetts, that we are ready to make any sacri- 
fices for the cause of freedom, that we will go into the ranks 
and work for victory, and that he and others may win and 
wear the honors of success.' But, though pressed to do so, 
Mr. Winthrop declined to join the movement proposed." 2 

In a letter to Ralph Waldo Emerson, dated Amesbury, 
July 3, 1854, John G. Whittier had written : — 

"The circular signed by thyself and others has just reached 
me. Your movement I regard as every way timely and ex- 
pedient. I have been for some time past engaged in efforts 
tending to the same object, — the consolidation of the anti- 
slavery sentiment of the North. For myself, I have nothing 
for names ; I have no prejudices against Whig or Democrat, 
and am more than willing to take the humblest place in a 
new organization made up from Whigs, anti-Nebraska Demo- 
crats, and Free-Soilers. The great body of the people here 
are ready to unite in the formation of such a party. The 
Whigs especially only wait for the movement of the men to 
whom they have been accustomed to look for direction. I 
may be mistaken, but I fully believe that Robert C. Winthrop 
holds in his hands the destiny of the North. By throwing 

1 Rise and Fall of the Slave Power, vol. ii. p. 433. 



172 A MEMOIR OF 

himself on the side of this movement he could carry with 
him the Whig strength of New England." 2 

Mr. Winthrop had known Whittier as far back as 
when the latter was a Henry Clay Whig, and had now 
and then received letters from him expressing approval 
of particular speeches. The result was that, in spite 
of wide differences of political opinion, a friendly feel- 
ing still existed between them, and in a letter to Mr. 
Winthrop in the summer of 1855, Whittier had urged 
and amplified the views expressed in the above letter to 
Emerson. Similar appeals came to Mr. Winthrop from 
other sources, but he was unable to comply with them 
without doing violence to his convictions. His views on 
the subject are best expressed in his well-known letter 
on the " Fusion of Parties," the whole of which is to be 
found in the second volume of his collected works, and 
from which I here quote a few passages : — 

I have no slavish devotion to party lines or party names. 
Who cares whether the organization under which we act be 
entitled Whig or Republican ? Why, it can hardly be forgot- 
ten that most of us were Republicans before we were Whigs. 
National Republicans, — that was the old name of the Whig 
party. I trust there is not more meant than meets the ear, 
in the proposal to omit the first half of that old name. I 
trust that we shall go for the whole or none, and that we 
shall insist on being nothing less than National Republicans 
in fact, whatever we may suffer ourselves to be entitled. I 
can see no advantage, however, in changing names, unless 
there is to be some substantial change of policy or principle. 
The mere addition of another alias confers no honor upon 
individuals or parties, and does nothing to increase the confi- 

1 Life and Letters of John Greenleaf Whittier, by S. T. Pickard, 
vol. i. p. 374. 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 173 

dence with which they are regarded by the community. What 
substantial change, then, of principle or of policy is the Whig 
party of Massachusetts called on to adopt, or what change 
are they ready to adopt, even if they are called on ? 

I am not about to aver that the course of the Whig party 
has always been the very wisest, discreetest, and best, which 
could possibly have been pursued. The time has been — 
more than once, perhaps — when I could have desired some 
material modification of that course. But take it for all in 
all, — in the general direction it has pursued, and in the 
general results it has accomplished, — what party has existed 
in our day and generation which has been more pure, more 
patriotic, more faithful to the best interests of the country 
and the true principles of the Constitution ? What party has 
ever included on its rolls and within its ranks a larger 
number of the most enlightened and devoted friends and de- 
fenders of our republic and its institutions ? I know of none. 
I understand by the Whig party of Massachusetts, in the first 
place, a Constitutional party, — which regards the Union 
of the States, and the Constitution which is the formal con- 
dition and bond of that Union, as things — above all other 
things — to be respected and maintained. I understand it to 
be a party which, while it may perceive some provisions of 
that Constitution which it might wish to have been other 
than they are, yet recognizes and accepts the whole, every 
article of it, as of binding force and obligation, — and that 
not according to any arbitrary individual understanding, but 
according to solemn judicial interpretation, — which justifies 
no revocation, equivocation, or evasion in the official oath to 
support that Constitution, but demands the exact and scrupu- 
lous fulfilment of that oath by all who are privileged to take 
it on their lips. I understand by the Whig party of Massa- 
chusetts, in the second place, a party of Law and Ordek, — 
which seeks reforms by no riotous or revolutionary processes, 
— which regards the great right of revolution as having been, 
once for all, asserted, and the great work of revolution, once 



174 A MEMOIR OF 

for all, accomplished, by those who have gone before us ; and 
which looks henceforward, for the redress of occasional griev- 
ances, to the peaceful and legitimate operation of the repub- 
lican institutions which they founded; which holds all 
nullification and disunion in utter abhorrence, and disclaims 
all sympathy with those who would burn constitutions and 
batter down courthouses. I understand by the Whig party 
of Massachusetts, in the third place, a party which consents 
to no bargain, and tolerates no traffic, as a means of securing 
office ; which abominates all political trading and huckstering, 
whether for the promotion of measures or of men ; and which 
looks with common aversion upon the congenial corruption 
which purchased a coalition triumph in the Legislature of 
Massachusetts, or a Nebraska triumph in the Congress of the 
United States. I understand by the Whig party of Massa- 
chusetts, in the fourth place, a party which looks to the ad- 
vancement of our national prosperity and welfare, by a liberal 
administration of the public lands, by a discriminating adjust- 
ment and an honest and equal collection of the duties upon 
imports, and by seasonable and sufficient appropriations for 
the improvement of rivers and harbors. I understand by the 
Whig party of Massachusetts, in the fifth place, a party which 
has adopted and pursued the true Washington policy of 
observing good faith and justice towards all nations, and of 
cultivating peace and harmony with all ; which would avoid 
all permanent antipathies and passionate attachments for 
other countries, and which, contenting itself with the vastness 
of our own territories, is opposed to every lawless scheme of 
foreign encroachment and aggrandizement. I understand by 
the Whig party of Massachusetts, in the sixth place, a party 
which demands the maintenance of equal representation and 
of an independent judiciary in our own Commonwealth, and 
which resists all tampering with our State Constitution for 
the purpose of breaking down the barriers of justice, or of 
transferring the legislative power of the State from the many 
to the few. And, finally, I understand by the Whig party of 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 175 

Massachusetts a party which deplores the existence of domes- 
tic slavery within the limits of the American Union or any- 
where else on the face of the globe ; which, while it abstains 
from all unconstitutional and illegal interference with it 
whatever, would omit no legal effort to arrest and prevent its 
extension; which would rejoice to co-operate in anj*- practi- 
cable method for its gradual and ultimate extinction, and to 
bear its share in any pecuniary sacrifices this might involve ; 
which stands ready to resist any encroachment and aggression 
upon Northern rights ; and which especially condemns and 
protests against the recent repudiation of the Missouri restric- 
tion and the reopening to slavery of a territory consecrated 
to freedom. 

This is what I understand the Whig party of Massachu- 
setts to have been, and still to be. And what is there in the 
present condition of public affairs which calls upon us to 
abandon such a party, and to enlist under the recruiting flag 
of a new one ? As to the poor pretence that the Whig party 
is dead, it has been dealt with sufficiently by others. It is 
the old story of the profligate prince who stole the crown from 
the pillow of his royal parent to place it prematurely on his 
own brow, and of whom it was so well said that his wish was 
only father to the thought. . . . For myself, I do not hesitate 
to agree with the late Whig Convention that the greatest 
evils which the people of Massachusetts are at this moment 
called on to redress and remedy are those within their own 
immediate limits. To redeem this ancient Commonwealth 
from the disgrace with which she has been covered, to lift her 
up from the mire into which corrupt and huckstering poli- 
ticians have plunged her, to erase from her records at least 
one act in direct and wanton violation of her constitutional 
obligations, and to replace her on that lofty eminence on which 
she so long stood, — this is the first duty of every true Massa- 
chusetts man. I cannot think this is to be done by the re- 
election of one half of the candidates of the very persons who 
have assisted in her degradation. I cannot think it is to be 



176 A MEMOIR OF 

done by the success of those who have openly proclaimed 
that no conformity is to be required upon this point, who 
have wholly omitted all allusion to it in their platform, and 
who have selected an entirely different and remote issue as 
the paramount and only issue for their consideration. Talk 
of omissions at this convention or that ! What omission is so 
glaring and so monstrous as that which has ignored the whole 
condition and policy of our State government at a moment 
when these alone are the direct subject of our struggle, — 
when there is really no other ' practical and living issue ' 
before us. I freely confess that I need no other inducement 
than this for adhering to the party with which I have been so 
long associated ; a party which has ever been faithful to the 
honor and welfare of Massachusetts, and under whose auspices 
she first won that proud and pre-eminent title, at home and 
abroad, — already forfeited, I fear, — of 'the model State' of the 
American Union. If that title is ever to be regained, it will 
be under something less speckled and motley than a Fusion 
flag. If the good old bark is once more to be the pride of the 
seas, or the blessing of the Bay, she must put in for repairs 
to something safer and better than a sectional, floating 
dock. . . . 

But we are urged to abandon our old colors, and rush 
wildly into the promiscuous ranks of a one-idea party, in order 
to promote some grand result connected with human liberty. 
Let us look at the new party for a single moment in this par- 
ticular liofht, and see what claims it has to our confidence. 
Beyond all doubt, a great and grievous wrong was perpetrated 
by the passage of the Nebraska Bill. I united with others in 
protesting against it at the outset, and I have no words of 
palliation or apology for it now. It was an act of a character 
to put ' toys of desperation ' into all our brains, to tempt us 
for the moment to break from all our old relations and to 
plunge into any policy which might hold out ever so delusive 
a hope of redress. But a sober second thought may lead us 
to inquire, What more can the Whigs of Massachusetts do on 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 177 

that subject than they have done already? Their representa- 
tives opposed it at every stage of its progress by argument 
and by vote, while the very men who are now clamoring most 
loudly for their aid and alliance manifested their appreciation 
of such fidelity by lying in wait to undermine and overthrow 
them at the earliest moment. . . . And this brings me to my 
principal objection to the new party, and that is, its eminent 
adaptation to defeat the very ends at which it professedly 
aims. I am one of those who believe that the ultraism and 
recklessness of some of these old Free-Soil leaders, who are 
now calling on the whole people to sustain them in the offices 
which they have gained by every degree of indirection and 
indecency, have been the occasion of not a few of those very 
aggressions which they are so vociferous in condemning, and 
are destined to be the occasion of still new ones, if they are 
to be encouraged and strengthened in their fanatical career. 
No class of men in the country, either Northern or Southern, 
have, in my judgment, been more responsible for many of the 
measures which they have been loudest in denouncing, than 
your regular Northern agitators, who have at last alarmed the 
South into an idea of the absolute necessity of strengthening 
herself for the protection of her domestic institutions. Some- 
times we know that the South has received the most direct 
and positive aid from this source. Nobody doubts that Texas 
was brought into the Union through the instrumentality of 
New York Free-Soilers, at least one of whom may be found at 
this moment among the leading Republican candidates in that 
State. Even the Nebraska Bill owed not a little of its success, 
in my opinion, to the fatuity of some of these ultra men. 
The violence to which they resorted, here and elsewhere, but 
particularly here, in resisting the Fugitive-Slave Law, pro- 
duced the impression that the North intended to keep no faith 
on any point. And when at length this Nebraska Bill was 
introduced, a handful of them precipitated themselves into 
the front ranks of the opposition, in a way to drive off the 
only persons who could have prevented its consummation. 

12 



178 A MEMOIR OF 

They usurped a lead which belonged to others and gave an 
odor of abolition to the whole movement. From the moment 
I read their ill-advised manifesto, I despaired of seeing that 
Southern opposition to the measure which, under other cir- 
cumstances, I fully and firmly believe we should have ob- 
tained. ... It is not enough considered that the real retarders 
of any movement are often found among those who are claim- 
ing to be its leaders. Has it not been so in the case of Tern- 
perance ? Has not excessive zeal and blind one-ideaism led 
at last to the enactment of laws which have created a general 
reaction and put back the cause of Temperance ? Just so it 
has been, and will be again, with these ultraists in the cause 
of freedom. For one, I never witness one of their violent 
spasmodic agitations about slavery at the North without look- 
ing to see it followed by some fresh triumph at the South. . . . 
We had a grand rising about Texas, I remember, after it was 
irreparably annexed, and now we are to have a grand rally 
about the repeal of the Missouri restriction, after it is hope- 
lessly accomplished. And while we are thus engaged, the 
South will be looking about them for some fresh chances of 
fortifying their institutions. Our ultraists will have succeeded 
in nothing but in alarming them afresh into a feeling that 
some new defences must be secured. They will have alienated 
and disgusted all the moderate and reasonable men among 
them and among ourselves ; and with the aid of the Democ- 
racy, some fresh annexation of new territory, or some other 
repeal, if anything remains to be repealed, of the restrictions 
upon old territory, will be successfully attempted. Geographi- 
cal parties will have been amiyed against each other, and 
thus the action and reaction of ultraism at both ends of the 
Union will go on to the end of the chapter, involving us in a 
never-ceasing series of mischievous and deplorable measures. 
And to this end we are called on to forget the past, to disre- 
gard all experience, and to rush into the formation of what 
has been elegantly denominated a great ' Backbone Party.' 
No : the vertebral column must support a sounder brain be- 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 179 

fore I can desire to see it assuming anything of additional 
strength and solidity. Better let it remain as fragmentary 
and rleshless as that of some fossil reptile of the coal meas- 
ures, if it is only to be employed as an instrument for disjoint- 
ing the carefully compacted framework of our national body 
politic, or if it is forever to serve as a bone of contention 
among those who ought to be able to live together in harmony 
and concord. One thing I long ago resolved on in my own 
political career, and that is, never to give countenance or sup- 
port to any policy or any party which tends in my conscientious 
conviction towards disorganization or disunion. 

. c . Let me only add, that I am not ready to concur with 
any expressions of disparagement or contempt which the heat 
of debate may have elicited from anybody for those old friends 
of ours who have parted from us somewhat suddenly and un- 
expectedly. I regret the loss of every man of them, and I 
heartily wish they were all back again among us to help us 
in our future struggles. There are many of them with whom 
I have agreed better about some things than I have with those 
that have stayed behind. For many of them I have the 
warmest personal regard, and though we may now seem to be 
pursuing different and divergent paths, I earnestly hope and 
trust we shall come out, one of these days, at the same Grand 
Junction, and be found travelling together again along the 
same old national highway. 

This letter elicited warm expressions of approval from 
many of Mr. Winthrop's political friends, but it gave 
great offence to his opponents. Some idea of how they 
felt about it may be gathered from the following para- 
graph which I find in one of his scrap-books, and which 
he had evidently clipped from a Free-Soil newspaper : 

" As Mr. Robert C. Winthrop's utterances on the subject of 
' Fusion ' are attracting some attention, we will state, for the 
benefit of the younger class of our political readers, that he 



ISO A MEMOIR OF 

was formerly a Member of Congress, and was elected Speaker 
of the House. He was an excellent presiding officer and was 
also somewhat distinguished as a debater. He was lament- 
ably deficient, however, in courage, and, having dodged behind 
one of the pillars of the Representative Chamber to escape 
the responsibility of a vote on the Wilmot Proviso, he became 
unpopular with the people of Massachusetts. He was accord- 
ingly turned out of the United States Senate, where he was 
filling or attempting to fill, a vacancy, and the next year he 
was badly beaten when running for Governor. By general 
consent he has since that time been kept out of political life. 
As President of the Massachusetts Historical Society, one of 
the principal managers of the Boston Public Library, and a 
speaker upon festive occasions, he still, however, occupies a 
creditable position, and is much esteemed by his fellow- 
citizens. His recent letter bears the unavoidable tinge of 
political disappointment, and the very reprehensible coloring 
of political hatred and revenge, elements of his character 
which we had hoped were exorcised by his long political 
exile." 

Further extracts from Mr. Winthrop's private letters 
here follow : — 

[Xahant, Aug. 23, 1855.] We buried poor Abbott Law- 
rence yesterday. His counsel would have been worth much 
in this exigency. The Fusion is in full progress, but I have 
refused to have any part or lot in it. Julius Rockwell has 
written me a long letter, to be shown to discreet friends, with 
much of which I agree, but it perhaps lays down a stiffer 
platform than I should care to be responsible for. Washing- 
ton Hunt's published letter is a good thing, and expresses my 
sentiments better than any of the manifestoes of the day. I 
told Rockwell I thought the best thing a Whig convention 
could do would be to nominate him for Governor, but if there 
is an Abolitionist tail to his kite I shall bolt. My fear is, 
that instead of punishing the authors of the Nebraska outrage, 



ROBERT C. WIXTHROP. 181 

we are preparing the way for their renewed triumph. For 
myself, I would make any sacrifice but that of honest con- 
viction to give a better direction to the public counsels. But 
what can be done by a man who feels as I do ? I voted against 
the Fugitive Bill, but I can never go for defeating the exe- 
cution of it by forcible resistance, or by unconstitutional 
legislation. I deplore the passage of the Nebraska Act, but 
I honestly believe that Northern rashness and violence have 
been the main instruments in accomplishing its worst results. 
I am for resisting the aggressions of slavery, but I cannot 
unite in taking the first great step for rending the Union by 
the formation of a sectional party. 

[Sept. 4.] I am just from Cambridge, where I have been 
greatly gratified and interested. The induction of Professor 
Huntingdon was most impressive, and Dr. Walker's sermon 
admirable. It contained a quotation from my Alumni ad- 
dress, and I had hardly realized the nobleness of my own 
sentence until I heard it from his lips. There was a solemn 
earnestness about to-day's services which made one feel that 
souls were at stake and eternity the issue. It made me feel, 
too, that if any word I had spoken or written had suggested 
or sustained such a movement, it was worth all the other 
words of my life. I wish you had been there to catch the 
inspiration and to conceive new hopes of the College. 

[Nov. 23.] Did you hear that I was unanimously nomi- 
nated for Mayor of Boston b}- the ' Citizens' Union,' and that 
I unanimously declined ? It would have been even more dis- 
tasteful to me than the presidency of Harvard, for which some 
well-meaning friends continue to suggest my name. I am 
conscious that my life has become too much a frittering away 
of time in petty cares and laborious trifles, but I can at least 
avoid duties for which my tastes and temperament unfit me. 1 

1 Mr. Winthrop had twice refused to be one of the Corporation of 
the University, but he had succeeded Mr. Everett as President of the 
Alumni Association, and was also President of the Harvard Club of 
Boston, a short-lived institution, now almost forgotten. 



182 A MEMOIR OF 

[June 7, 1850.] My long silence has been due to ill health 
and the sickness of two of my children. The latter are con- 
valescent ; but as I continued poorly, I decided to try the 
effect of a journey, and on Saturday, the 24th ult., was busy 
with my preparations when I was waylaid about noon by our 
worthy friend, Samuel May, with a request from the com- 
mittee appointed at the Theodore Parker and Wendell Phil- 
lips meeting the night before that I would say a few words 
at Faneuil Hall that evening. I told him that nobody con- 
demned the assault on Sumner more unqualifiedly than I did, 
but that the state of my health would render it impossible for 
me to accept, even if I desired to do so. At five in the after- 
noon appeared Judge Russell, accompanied by a gentleman 
whose name I did not catch. The Judge said he was not 
surprised I did not think it prudent to attend the meeting, if 
I supposed it were to be a continuation of that of the night 
before and under the same auspices, but that he wished to in- 
form me the Governor was to preside, and that Walley, Hil- 
lard, and Chandler were to speak. I replied that no prudential 
considerations had entered into my answer to Mr. May, though 
I could not forget that Faneuil Hall meetings were not always 
the most fortunate things in times of excitement, — witness 
a somewhat recent one followed by an assault on the Court 
House and the murder of an officer ; but I repeated my un- 
mitigated condemnation of the attack on Sumner, and ex- 
pressed a hope the present meeting would be so conducted 
that all good citizens might concur in its proceedings. About 
seven in the evening appeared Charles Hale, who earnestly sug- 
gested that it would be both graceful and politic for me to go 
to Faneuil Hall and express sympathy for Sumner. Again I 
went through my primary and conclusive reasons, but Charles 
beino- a friend, I ventured into some secondary and tertiary 
strata, pointing out that it would be impossible for me to say 
all that the existing irritation of the public mind required, — 
that I could not indorse Sumner's general course, or this par- 
ticular speech of Ins, and that any qualifications at such a 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 183 

moment would subject me to imputations of willingness to 
wound an injured man and feed an ancient grudge. I added, 
moreover, my regret that these meetings should have been 
hurried along with such precipitancy, while we have had only 
telegraphic accounts of what occurred, and while both Senate, 
House, and Criminal Courts are instituting processes to give 
us the facts. Monday I started with my family for Saratoga, 
returning here by way of New York a week later, when I 
found a note from Dr. S. G. Howe inviting me to a Kansas agi- 
tation meeting the next evening, and enclosing a note from 
Walley to suggest that I should make the opening speech. 
This I declined to do in an elaborate letter, which I have not 
yet seen in print. It was no great affair, rather solemn and 
grandiose, dealing more in cautions against violence than in 
appeals to clap-trap, and deprecating the prevailing tone of 
defiance and challenge. I wish I were in better health, and 
I wish and wish and wish I could see my way clear to saying 
something, or doing something, to satisfy my own conscience 
and soothe the outraged feelings of others. Monstrous enor- 
mities have undoubtedly been committed. In Kansas is real- 
ized the ' abomination of desolation standing where it ought 
not.' Pierce ought to have sent Scott there a month ago, 
to enforce peace at all hazards, — though his presence and 
prestige would have averted all hazards without a blow. It 
is a perfect farce that there should be a President at one end 
of Pennsylvania Avenue and a Congress at the other, and 
nothing done to prevent such an outrage as the destruction 
of Lawrence. But, bad as the beginning has been, I fear 
worse remains behind. How is civil war to be finally extin- 
guished and any hope of free soil to be secured ? This is a 
question for deeper wisdom than any which Emigrant Aid 
Societies, just and justifiable though they may be, have ever 
yet brought to it. Massachusetts men have either done too 
much or too little. I am not sure their efforts have as yet 
accomplished anything of substantial good. A quieter action 
would have answered a better purpose, but Quietus is not the 



184 A MEMOIR OF 

patron saint of these times, notwithstanding his bones have 
been brought over and enshrined on our soil. As to the at- 
tack on Sumner, I cannot exaggerate my sense of its atrocity. 
If I were in the House I should vote to expel his assailant 
forthwith, and censure his two comrades. But I am amazed 
that any moderate men should allow themselves to be drawn 
into a position which might seem to approve Sumner's speech. 
A more offensive, irritating, and unparliamentar y philippic 
was never uttered in any legislative body ; and it will be an 
evil day for the country if we shall so far yield to the im- 
pulses of a generous and honorable sympathy with the injured 
author as to hold up such a style of personal assault as a 
model for the imitation of our ingenuous youth. It is only 
less bad than the physical violence which it provoked. 1 Anti- 
slavery agitation has introduced a strain of vituperation and 
defamation into our discussions which is perfectly unendur- 
able. Nor is it fair to charge the whole South with complicity 
in this outrage because a few newspapers and a few hot-heads 
have applauded it. The best Southern papers condemn it. 
and even Botts has come out nobly for expulsion. There are 
as many Christian gentlemen at the South as at the North, if 
we will only give them a fair chance to say what they think. 
I do not agree, either, that an attempt, however outrageous, 
to avenge what were considered by infuriated Hotspurs as 
insulting personalities, comes up to the full measure of the 
true idea of a sectional attack on freedom of speech. 

[June 11.] The simultaneousness of the suggestion in my 
letter to Dr. Howe, and Crittenden's motion in the Senate, 
may furnish matter for the quid nuncs. 2 The truth is, I wrote 
confidentially to Crittenden, urging him to do something, and 
suggested this very thing. Under the circumstances, I am 
glad the printing of my letter was delayed, as I much prefer 

1 Mr. Seward told Mr. "Winthrop (in Vienna, in 1859) that he had 
vainly entreated Mr. Sumner to soften certain passages, which the latter 
had read to him in advance. 

2 The plan for sending General Scott to Kansas with full powers. 



ROBERT C. WIXTHROP. 185 

Crittenden's movement should take all the credit, and have 
priority in the Southern estimation. It will thus stand a 
better chance of being regarded with favor. If any good 
comes of it (and I see that Seward has indorsed it) I shall be 
sufficiently rewarded by the result. Further explanations 
when we meet. 

[July 6.] Our excellent friend, Ephraim Peabody, who, I 
fear, is not long for this world, met at St. Augustine an 
officer who had been much employed in Kansas until a very 
recent period, and who had enjoyed many personal opportu- 
nities of knowing what was going on there. From him 
Peabody formed a by no means favorable impression of Reeder 
and Robinson, which confirmed what I heard not long before 
from others. Peabody does not hesitate to pronounce the 
Republican movement to be, in his judgment, an organization 
of Disunion. This is farther than I am prepared to go my- 
self, but I fully agreed with him when he spoke of Theodore 
Parker and Wendell Phillips and Charles Sumner and the 
rest as having gradually educated our people to relish nothing 
but the ' eloquence of abuse.' As to the Whig Caucus, 1 
went there for five minutes on my way to the Agricultural 
Trustees' dinner at C. G. Loring's in Beverly. My main ob- 
ject in going was to put a stop to a foolish story that I had 
come out for Buchanan. I declared myself uncommitted to 
any candidate, and disposed to pursue a policy of observation 
and expectation. Last week I sent a letter to Rives, in reply 
to one he had addressed to me in the ' National Intelligencer,' 
in which I sufficiently indicated my non-concurrence with 
some of his constitutional views. 1 Fillmore's speech at Albany 
was not entirely to my taste. He had better have left some 
things unsaid, though his general view of the danger of an 

1 William Cabell Rives, long Senator from Virginia, twice minister 
to France, and author of the Life of Madison, was a statesman whom Mr. 
Winthrop held in the highest esteem and with whom he occasionally 
corresponded upon public affairs. This particular letter to him will be 
found in the appendix to the second volume of Mr. "Winthrop's works. 



1SG A MEMOIR OF 

essentiall} 7 sectional administration is a strong and startling 
one. Burlingame, however, seems to have denounced as 
traitors in advance all who hold back from the great Northern 
Raid. His reception seems to have almost equalled Webster's 
five years ago. It looks as if Brooks's bludgeon had given a 
sort of coup de gr&ce to the Whig party. Judge Arthur P. 
Butler has sent me a dozen copies of his speech, and I will 
send you one. Audi alteram partem is a safe rule, and though 
this speech does not change one's views of his nephew's con- 
duct, it will give you a juster and more favorable impression 
of the uncle. A gentleman from Louisiana, who brought me 
a note the other day, told me that he had not met a single 
person at the South, in his own rank of life, who approved 
the assault on Sumner. Did I tell you that both Choate and 
Levi Lincoln, who do not always agree, cordially approved 
my letter to S. G. Howe? 

[July 11.] I cannot go Buchanan and his platform. Per- 
sonally, I could look with complacency upon the election of 
Fremont and Dayton, — the latter, you may remember, is one 
of my best friends, — but whether I can see my way clear to 
giving aid and comfort to the Republican party and taking 
my share of the responsibility of the results, is another matter. 
The resolutions of the Whigs of Maryland come nearer my 
way of thinking than anything I have met with lately, — 
bating, of course, some phrases. 

[Aug. 17.] To-morrow's 'Courier' will contain a brief 
note of mine which pretty much settles my political position. 
With no candidate of our own, Whigs are compelled to choose 
between the three in the field. Choate has swallowed Bu- 
chanan, but I could not do it ; while all my convictions are 
opposed to a sectional party under Fremont. Nothing re- 
mained but to support Fillmore, which, in my judgment, 
comes nearest to maintaining my old position, however little 
I may fancy the ' American ' party so-called. It is a relief to 
me to have declared my preference, as every day was bringing 
me letters from North, South, East, or West, asking me to 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 187 

declare for Fremont, to speak for Fillmore, or to join the 
Democracy. Choate's course threw suspicion on all Conser- 
vative men who were silent. Everett, Nathan and William 
Appleton, Hillard, and many others think as I do. I had a 
great treat here at Nahant last Sunday, in two sermons from 
Professor Park. He has no superior, and few equals, in the 
pulpit of any denomination. 

[Aug. 30.] I hate to be pressed into political service just 
as I am giving the last touches to my Franklin Statue Ora- 
tion. Certain gentlemen, however, insist upon my presiding 
at the Whig Convention, and I have not been able to get off. 
I shall try to be conciliatory and save pieces enough for a re- 
composition hereafter, but there is nothing harder than such 
an effort at such a moment. It is easy to speak on either ex- 
treme. Moderation is always dull. There is nothing impul- 
sive or emotional about it. There was a moment in the 
early part of this hurly-burly when it would not have been 
difficult for me to go for Fremont. There was another mo- 
ment when I even contemplated Buchanan. The pendulum 
oscillated two or three times and then settled down in the old 
perpendicular. I don't think it will swing again. But I am 
ready to make allowance for the vibrations and oscillations of 
other people while I am so conscious of my own. Nor am I 
insensible to the suggestion that what seems perpendicular to 
my own eye may after all strike others as very oblique. Tell 
Grinnell I duly received his Fremont song, and am sorry it 
does not suit my voice. If he will come and sing it to me, I 
might be converted at the eleventh hour. Meantime I think 
of sending him a ' Star-spangled Banner ' just published by 
the 'Nationals.' 

Mr. Winthrop's speech on taking the chair of the 
Whig State Convention (Sept. 3, 1856) is to be found 
in his second volume. As prefigured in the foregoing 
letter, it was moderate and conciliatory, — so much so 
that it was criticised in some quarters as lacking his 



^ 



188 A MEMOIR OF 

accustomed fire and partaking of the nature of an 
anodyne, — a description certainly not applicable to a 
campaign speech of his at Faneuil Hall on the 24th 
of October, when the fray had thickened. From this 
latter I quote a passage or two : — 

I cannot help sometimes envying the orators of the Free- 
Soil party the facility and obviousness of their appeals, and 
coveting the fertility and availableness of their topics. I 
have even been tempted to flatter myself that I could be an 
orator, also, if I could find in my conscientious convictions of 
propriety or patriotism to employ the materials which they 
employ in the way in which they employ them, — to serve up 
the same sort of dishes with the same amount of sauce. We 
all know by heart the recipe for a regular Free-Soil speech in 
these days. One third part Missouri Compromise Repeal, 
without one grain of allowance for the indisputable fact that 
it was proposed and supported by Northern men, and could 
not have been carried without their aid ; one third Kansas Out- 
rages by Border Ruffians, without one scruple of doubt as to 
the wisdom of the Northern measures which, reasonably or 
unreasonably, have furnished so much of their pretext and 
provocation ; and one third disjointed facts, and misapplied 
figures, and great swelling words of vanity, to prove that the 
South is, upon the whole, the very poorest, meanest, least pro- 
ductive, and most miserable part of creation, and therefore 
ought to be continually teased and taunted and reproached 
and reviled by everybody who feels himself to be better off. 
This, Mr. Chairman, is the brief prescription for a mixture, 
which, seasoned to the taste and administered foaming, is as 
certain to draw, and as sure to produce the desired inflamma- 
tion, as a plaster of Burgundy pitch or Spanish flies is to raise 
a blister. The truth is, and it is a sad truth, that we are all 
becoming gradually educated to the language of abuse, — 
educated to listen to it, to relish it, and to employ it. The 
old phrases of soberness and truth, the old forms of argument 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 189 

and appeal, have lost their power to attract or interest us. 
We must have racy and rancorous personalities, inflated repre- 
sentations and turgid exaggerations of individual or sectional 
wrongs, stinging and venomous invectives upon some person, 
or some measure, or some institution, — in order to gratify 
our perverted tastes and prurient appetites. These are the 
deplorable results of a style of address which, commencing 
not a great while ago, on a few anniversary platforms and in 
a few quasi pulpits, has gradually found its way into almost 
every public assembly, and has infected and poisoned the 
whole atmosphere of political discussion. I am glad that, on 
this point at least, I have not been wholly misrepresented of 
late, even by those from whom I most widely differ. Some 
of you may have seen a newspaper commentary on some re- 
cent remarks of mine, in which, after other and more caustic 
criticisms, my speech was pronounced to be about as good as 
a dose of chloroform. I thank the writer of that article, 
whoever he was. Chloroform, sir ! Why, it is the very thing 
of all others which is most needed at this moment for the 
political peace and safety of our country. If a little of it 
could only have been administered before certain blows were 
struck, which we all deplore and condemn ; if a little of it 
could have been administered before certain words were 
spoken, which some of us cannot applaud or approve ; if a 
little of it could have been administered when rash and reck- 
less men were first precipitating us into these perilous con- 
troversies by the breaking up of old compacts and by the 
earlier resistance to more recent laws ; if a great deal of it 
could have been scattered broadcast over that unfortunate 
Territory of Kansas, before a blow had been struck or a rifle 
loaded on either side, — if chloroform could have been season- 
ably and successfully applied to such purposes as these, that 
mysterious anaesthetic agent would have established its char- 
acter politically, as it has done already personally, as the most 
blessed anodyne which the pharmacy of the world has ever 
furnished. The preservation of the Union might thus have 



190 A MEMOIR OF 

been associated with another Jackson besides him of Tennes- 
see, and the peace and honor of our own Commonwealth with 
another Morton besides him of Taunton. 1 It is now, indeed, 
too late for all this, and I fear we must say to Kansas at least, 
in the language, though by no means in the spirit, of Iago to 
the Moor of Venice, — 

1 Not poppy, nor mandragora, 
Not all the drowsy syrups of the world, 
Shall ever med'cine thee to that sweet sleep 
Which thou owedst yesterday.' 

Yet even now, whatever is to be done for Kansas is, in 
my judgment, to be sooner done and better done by appeals 
to reason than by resort to rifles, — by the restoration of har- 
mony and concord throughout the country than by any con- 
tinuance of angry agitation or any political triumph whatever. 
At any rate, it cannot be denied that there is still room for 
the application of chloroform elsewhere. If a little of it could 
even now be inhaled in Carolina and in Massachusetts, — if 
a few drops could be sprinkled over a certain Southern town- 
ship, called ' 96,' I think, or even over a few pulpits and pro- 
fessional chairs nearer home, — I am sure that the condition of 
the whole country would be all the better for it ; and for the 
latter part of the process, I know of nobody who would hold 
the sponge more hopefully than our worthy friend, Dr. Luther 
V. Bell. 2 We have, indeed, fallen upon strange times. We 
hear one great political party indulging in frantic shouts that 
the institutions of the North — our free labor, our free speech, 
our free territory — are all in imminent danger of being over- 
thrown or overrun ; and we see masses of men among us 
rushing along in a wild, unreasoning frenzy to their rescue. 
We hear another great party vociferating with an even noisier 
clamor in other quarters that the institutions of the South 
are in immediate jeopard}", — their property, their slave labor, 

1 A controversy was then raging as to the relative share of Doctors 
Jackson and Morton in the introduction of anesthetics. 

2 Dr. Bell was then the Whig candidate for Governor. 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 191 

their equal rights to the enjoyment of common privileges 
and possessions, — and we see them banding themselves to- 
gether to meet the assault with whatever of desperate energy 
a sense of impending wrong can stimulate. Take up a South- 
ern paper, or listen to a Southern speech, and you would 
suppose that the whole history of this government, from its 
earliest organization, and a little before, had been one un- 
broken succession of injuries and oppressions committed by 
the North upon the South. Take up a Northern paper, or 
listen to a Northern speech, and you would imagine that 
there had been no glorious liberty enjoyed, no unrivalled 
prosperity experienced, no unexampled progress witnessed 
among us, but that year after year all the hopes and expec- 
tations and promises of our free institutions had been blasted 
and overwhelmed by the aggressions of a domineering and 
detestable Southern oligarchy. Exaggerated and ridiculously 
intensified, as I hold all such representations on both sides to 
be, I believe there is as much sincerity in the authors of them 
at one end of the Union as at the other; and I am not of 
that class, if any such there be, who hold them to be abso- 
lutely unfounded at either end. Without going into the 
details of the case, at present, on either side, I do not hesi- 
tate to express my belief that the success of the Democracy 
on the principles of the Cincinnati platform and the Ostend 
Circular would be dangerous to the rightful interests and 
claims of the free States ; and that, on the other hand, the 
success of the Republican party — it might better be called 
the semi- Republican party, for its organization embraces only 
about half the Republic — would be dangerous to the legiti- 
mate power and rights of the Southern States. I rejoice, 
therefore, that there is a third party, which sees that out of 
these local and sectional dangers is made up one great 
national danger, — that the whole country is in danger from 
the success of either of them, and that the best safety of the 
Union is to be found in the defeat of them both. And most 
heartily do I wish that this third party could be seen rising 



102 A MEMOIR OF 

up, like an army with banners, in sufficient strength to come 
effectually between the two angry combatants, who are sacri- 
ficing the concord and unity of the nation to their intemper- 
ate violence, — just as some stout policeman, or some brave 
and philanthropic bystander, would thrust himself between 
two quarrelsome customers in the streets, interposing his stal- 
wart form and brawny arm as a barrier to all further blows, 
and crying, iVo, you don't, to them both. Yes, that 's the 
word, — no, you don't, — to both of them. 'No, you don't 
disturb our domestic peace. No, you don't blot out the 
memory of common dangers and common glories which has 
so long bound us together as brethren. No, you don't 
break up that noble fabric of constitutional law and liberty, 
which is the best protection of all who enjoy it, and the best 
hope of all who, at home or abroad, are struggling in bond- 
age. No, you don't dissolve the Union. Back, both of you, 
and get cool. No more broken compacts, no more personal 
assaults, no more challenges and duels, no more sectional 
strife. Hands off each other's throats. Back, both of you, 
and learn to govern yourselves before you presume to govern 
the country ! ' That is the spirit in which we are assembled 
here this evening. That is the spirit in which you and I and 
all of us, who still cling to the old Whig standard, have come 
here to ratify the nomination of Millard Fillmore. And that 
is the spirit in which we believe that he would enter upon 
his administration, and conduct it safely and prosperously to 
its close. We seek not to commit the reins of our Chariot of 
the Sun to any veteran Jehu whose vision may have grown 
oblique by gazing too intently on the Southern Cross ; nor 
are we quite ready to intrust them to any youthful Phaeton 
who would incline too closely to the Northern Bear ; but we 
would deliver them once more to that experienced and even- 
handed patriot, who has once guided the fiery coursers safely 
along the Ecliptic, holding them as steadily upon the track 
through the perilous passes of the Lion and the Scorpion as 
over the gentler elevations or declivities of the Virgin and 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 193 

the Scales, and keeping successively in sight, and always and 
equally in mind, the whole one and thirty stars of our great 
American constellation ! 

... If yonder votive canvas could speak, if the lips of the 
Father of his Country could at this moment be unsealed, what 
other meaning could he give to his own memorable words of 
warning ? Not a geographical party ! Why, how long is it 
since it was distinctly declared by some of the present leaders 
of the Republican party that the great remedy for existing 
evils was the formation of a party which should have no 
Southern wing, — that was the phrase, no Southern icing, — 
for it was added that as long as there was a Southern wing, 
there must be compliances and concessions to the South, and 
compromises would be the order of the day. Away back in 
1847, that was the object of a resolution in a Whig conven- 
tion, which I had the honor to oppose, and which, I rejoice to 
say, was defeated. But the defeat, it seems, was not final, 
and the object has at length been accomplished. We have 
now a party without any Southern wing, and it is looked upon 
in some quarters as the opening of the first parallel of the 
great antislavery siege which has so long been projected. The 
result of such an organization remains still to be developed. 
But I am now where I always have been. I am against all 
such organizations. I have no faith in any party which tries 
to fly up into the high places of this great republic on one 
wing. As soon should I look to see the imperial bird which 
is the chosen emblem of our country's glory, cleaving the 
clouds and pursuing his fearless and upward path through 
the skies, if one of his wings had been ruthlessly lopped off. 
I want no maimed or mutilated emblem of my country's pro- 
gress. I would not pluck a single plume from his pinions 
even to feather my own New England nest. And still less 
do I want any maimed or mutilated country. Nothing less 
than the whole, however bounded, — or, certainly, however it 
is now rightfully bounded, — will content me. And I desire 
to see no party organizations from which any portion of that 

13 



194 A MEMOIR OF 

country is intentionally or necessarily excluded. When a 
party composed of only half the States in the Union shall 
assert its title to the name of a national party, and shall be 
claimed and recognized as such, it will not be long, I fear, — 
it will not be long, — before half the States will claim to be 
recognized as a nation by themselves. A semi-republican 
party is only the first step to a semi-republic, and we all know 
it is the first step that costs. ... I am no panic-maker, nor 
have I ever set myself up to be much of a ' union-saver.' 
But this I do say, that this continued scuffling and wrangling 
between sections, these perpetual contentions and conflicts 
between the North and the South, are so shaking the founda- 
tions and jarring the superstructure and loosening the cement 
of our great republican fabric, that even if nobody should 
ever care to assail it directly, it may one day or other become 
absolutely untenantable, and be found falling to pieces by 
itself, by its own weakness and its own weight. And I do 
say, also, that every man who loves that Union — as others 
do, I doubt not, quite as sincerely and perhaps more wisely 
than myself — should look to it seasonably that by no word, 
act, or vote of his, which is not absolutely essential to the 
vindication of rights and privileges which are never to be 
abandoned, he hastens and precipitates a catastrophe which 
it may be too late to repent, and which no time or wisdom 
may be able to repair, and when a voice may be heard over 
our land, like that which once sounded over Jerusalem of 
old : ' If thou hadst known, even in this thy day, the things 
which belong to thy peace, — but now they are hid from thine 
eyes ! ' 

IX. 

[Oct. 2, 1856.] We got back from Berkshire in season to 
dine with John E. Thayer at Brookline, to meet the Mere- 
diths of Baltimore. We overtook the Presidential train at 
Springfield, and on my going to pay my respects, Pierce in- 



ROBERT C. WIXTHROP. 195 

sisted upon coming into our car to shake hands with Mrs 
Winthrop, and told me that if the Senate Bill had passed he 
had intended to name me one of the Commissioners to Kansas. 
It would have been a thankless task, but one difficult to re- 
fuse. I had a long talk with Hamilton Fish in New York, 
and met there, among others, an old school-mate of mine, 
George Goldthwaite, whom I had not seen since he left the 
Boston Latin School. He has been Chief Justice of Alabama, 
is a large slave-owner and a warm advocate of the peculiar 
institution. Frank Gray is, I fear, slowly nearing his end. 
If he could bequeath all his information to some one of equal 
capacity to digest, remember, and recall it at will, it would be 
a richer legacy than even his ample fortune. I have found 
his conversation more instructive than that of any man of my 
time. 1 

[Jan. 19, 1857.] We are said to have four feet of snow in 
our streets, and it is still snowing. Benton has been here, full 
of the necessity of preparing for the next General Election. 
What pluck the old fellow has at seventy-five ! He and 
Granger dined with me, and some one mentioned that, since 
his re-election, Sumner had avowed a purpose to make a 
speech in the Senate, in comparison with which the one that 
cost him a beating will be as molasses and water to first-proof 
brandy. James A. Pearce must have prefigured this when he 
wrote me last month that, although he had five years left of 
his term, he doubted whether he could stand the Senate much 
longer, finding ' no adequate compensation in the bare and 
fruitless performance of duty.' He speaks of having been 
with the Democrats, rather than of them, in the late campaign, 
and this is undoubtedly the feeling of other Southern Whigs 
similarly situated. I sent you my talk at the gathering of 
Sons of Connecticut — no great things. I have half promised 
our old Handel and Haydn Society to deliver an address on 
Music in New England at a festival they are arranging for 

1 Hon. Francis C. Gray, for some account of whom see the fifth vol- 
ume of the second series of this Society's Proceedings. 



196 A MEMOIR OF 

the early spring. I should rather like to do this, as really 
good music has been and is the greatest pleasure of my 
life. 

On the 17th of June, 1857, a celebration took place 
on Bunker Hill, under the auspices of the Bunker Hill 
Monument Association, when Edward Everett deliv- 
ered an address at the unveiling of a statue of Joseph 
Warren. Besides bidding to this commemoration dis- 
tinguished persons from all parts of the country, the 
Committee of Arrangements saw fit to extend a whole- 
sale invitation to the entire Senate of the United States, 
and they were made not a little uncomfortable by find- 
ing that, among the very few acceptances, was one from 
James M. Mason of Virginia, who, as the author of 
the Fugitive Slave Bill, was more unpopular in New 
England than any other Southern statesman. Having 
unexpectedly caught this Tartar, the committee pro- 
ceeded to request Mr. Winthrop, as a vice-president of 
the Association, and an old acquaintance of Mr. Mason, 
to show him some little attention, and formally intro- 
duce him to the guests at the banquet which followed 
the literary exercises ; in doing which, after paying a 
brief compliment to Virginia, Mr. Winthrop used the 
following language : — 

The State to which I refer, and which was once entitled by 
the people of Boston assembled in Faneuil Hall ' our noble, 
patriotic sister-colony, Virginia,' is represented here to-day by 
one of her distinguished Senators in Congress, — a gentleman 
whom I have known personally in a sphere of common duty, 
— whose name is associated, in more than one generation, 
with eminent service in his native State and in the national 
councils, and wdiom I take pleasure in welcoming here, in 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 197 

your behalf, on this, his first visit to New England. I present 
to you, fellow-citizens, the Honorable James Murray Mason, 
a Senator of the United States from the Old Dominion. 

Less than three weeks afterward occurred the annual 
celebration of the Fourth of July by the Municipality 
of Boston, when the appointed orator of the day took 
occasion to stigmatize Mr. Winthrop's course in the 
above matter as an exhibition of " complimentary 
flunky ism." Thereupon ensued one of those acrimo- 
nious controversies as indigenous to this neighborhood 
as its east wind, — the City government declining to 
print the oration, and the friends of its author writing 
excited letters to the newspapers, 1 claiming that he had 
only administered "another deserved rebuke" to Mr. 
Winthrop, who preferred to take no public notice of 
what had occurred, but who incidentally alluded to it 
in the following private letter : — 

[July 21.] We had a good time at the Alumni Festival, 
but as presiding officer I had to propose so many toasts and 
make so many speeches that I was quite exhausted. Napier 2 
was charming, and I took him down to dine with Prescott. 
As to the Mason matter, I had nothing to do with the invita- 
tions, and did not know he was coming until two days before 
the celebration. He is no favorite of mine, and I once had a 
brush with him in the Senate ; but he was here as our invited 
guest, and it seemed only reasonable to forget political differ- 
ences and treat him as the representative of Virginia, as one 
who had been acting Vice-President of the United States and 

1 The " Antislavery Standard," among others, had a letter from 
William Jay, proclaiming that, while " Boston has no monopoly of 
flunkyism, she has contrived to give it a depth and an intensity rarely 
surpassed by the most ingenious servility." 

2 The tenth Lord Xapier of Merchistoun, then British Minister to the 
United States, who made an effective speech at the Alumni dinner. 



198 A MEMOIR OF 

is still Chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Rela- 
tions. Wilson and Burlingame both told me, on the spot, 
that they were glad he was there, and as they both compli- 
mented me on the way in which I introduced him, they could 
have had nothing to do with this attack. I have never, to my 
knowledge, seen my assailant, who, I am told, is not only a 
minister of the Gospel, but a man of cultivation. I have 
prompted no action with regard to him, but I cannot consider 
his course calculated to give a favorable impression of New 
England hospitality. During my public life I have certainly 
experienced a variety of epithets. ' Doughface ' and ' trimmer ' 
were long ago familiar. 'Codfish aristocrat' is what Andrew 
Johnson amused himself by calling me on the floor of the 
House. Irate Webster men, I believe, were known to whisper 
' Judas,' and Sumner, as you may remember, once intimated 
that I was little better than an assassin! But 'flunky' is 
new, and it has an ignoble sound ; but I do not mind it so 
much as the mean charge, now just made, that I modified my 
language about Mason when I gave it to the printer. You 
know how careful I am about my ipsissima verba. 

[Sept. 21.] How could so wise a man as our friend B. R. 
Curtis do so deplorable a thing as to resign from the U. S. 
Supreme Court at this untimely moment ? I may overesti- 
mate the importance of his course, and I certainly esteem and 
respect him, but I have never known a resignation which has 
so much the air of desertion. Buchanan will have a chance 
to make the Court still less acceptable to this part of the 
country. As to local politics, Banks and Gardner are beating 
the air per alios ct per se, trying which can say the hardest 
things of each other. There is no Whig ticket, and I can at 
least rejoice at being under no obligation to attend conventions 
or mount stumps. I think Banks will be chosen, but I need 
hardly say I do not intend to vote for him. I may do him an 
injustice, but he strikes me as partaking a good deal of the 
solemn, pretentious humbug. They call him the ' little iron 
man, ' but I should say there was much lead and a considerable 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 199 

alloy of brass in his composition. 1 You may remember that in 
my remarks at the Alumni dinner, I warmly advocated the erec- 
tion of a hall for anniversary festivals and other appropriate 
occasions, with some such inscription as ' The Alumni of 
Harvard to their Alma Mater.' It has greatly gratified me to 
receive a cordial letter from Charles Sanders, offering $5,000 
for this purpose, and I have some reason to think he may 
give more hereafter. 2 

Having been strongly urged to declare himself in the 
State canvass, Mr. Winthrop wrote a letter, dated Oct. 
16, 1857, and addressed to Col. J. W. Sever, in which 
he recited his reasons for again declining to vote for 
the candidate of a sectional party, and adding: — 

I am disposed to vote for that one of the other candidates 
who stands the best chance of defeating the Republican ticket. 
The friends with whom I have heretofore acted seem to enter- 
tain the fullest confidence that Governor Gardner is that 
man ; and unless I see some stronger reason for distrusting 
their judgment than I do now, I shall give him a vote this 
year for the first time. If I cannot approve every act of his 
administration thus far, I think it is at least safer ' to bear the 
ills we have than fly to others that we know not of.' 

I find in his scrap-book a leading article from the 
" National Intelligencer " praising his course, and the 
following extract from a Boston letter in the New- 
York "Times": — 

" Mr. Winthrop's letter to the Gardner meeting will add as 
little to the Governor's strength as to the writer's reputation. 
It is plain to see that Mr. Winthrop hates Governor Gardner 

1 This is one of those off-hand characterizations common to the 
familiar letters of intimate friends, but which are generally to be taken 
cum grano salis. Mr. Winthrop formed a more complimentary opinion 
of General Banks when he knew him better. 

2 By his will, Mr. Sanders left §50,000 to this object. 



^ 



7 



200 A MEMOIR OF 

only one degree less than he hates Mr. Banks, and that per- 
sonal malignity is his motive of action. He is ready to do 
anything, or to vote for any person, that will aid him most to 
pay an ancient grudge. He carries into the political arena 
the same intense spitefulness that Shylock took into court. 
Everybody sees this, and none more clearly than the men 
whom Mr. Winthrop thinks he is aiding, but whom in reality 
he injures. It is not to be supposed that they will hold them- 
selves under any very special obligations to him, let the 
election go as it may." 

On the 8th of October, 1857, Mr. Winthrop sub- 
mitted to the City Council a memorial prepared by 
him on behalf of the Boston Provident Association, 
in which he earnestly recommended bringing together 
under a common roof the offices of the principal authori- 
ties and associations connected with the charities of 
Boston, in order to afford not merely a central head- 
quarters for investigation and relief, but a temporary 
home for shelter, and to facilitate a more active and 
systematic division of duty and labor. This appeal, 
persistently renewed at intervals by Mr. Winthrop and 
others, ultimately led to the erection of the well-known 
Charity Bureau in Chardon Street, one of the most useful 
of our public buildings ; but it was not until twelve years 
later that he had the gratification of making an opening 
address within its walls. Of his various public utter- 
ances during the year 1858, the most important was 
one on the completion and dedication of the Public 
Library, of which more than two years before he had 
officiated on laying the corner-stone. 

[Feb. 8, 1858.] Thanks for your letter from Naples. 
The climate of Italy has been wafted over to us latterly, and 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 201 

even her beggary we have seen something of. In my Prov- 
ident Association we relieved more than two thousand poor 
families in the single month of January. Prescott has had a 
shock, premonitory of what may still be postponed some years. 
We cannot afford to lose his sunny face and genial welcome. 
His brother-in-law, Franklin Dexter (a very old friend of 
mine), died last autumn. Everett is going his Washington 
circuit again, gathering laurels for himself and money for 
Mount Vernon. They have had a horrid knock-down and 
drag-out affair in Congress apropos of Kansas. I shut my 
eyes and ears to politics, sick of the very sound of brawling 
and bickering about slavery, but the failing health of my 
wife's mother renders going abroad, for the present, out of 
the question. 

[June 19.] Greenough's statue of Governor Winthrop at 
Mount Auburn is perhaps a little too youthful and saint-like 
in its general effect, but on the whole a successful work. I 
sat for the hands, at his request. We had three days of 
drenching rain in Philadelphia, and as many pleasant ones in 
New York, where James Lenox showed me his books and 
pictures, and Peter Cooper his Institute. I was glad to escape 
'Anniversary Week.' So much of abolition and sectional 
fanaticism has got mixed up with the meetings of our re- 
ligious and charitable associations that I cannot abide them, 
though in old times I used not a little to value such opportu- 
nities of saying a good word. We are going to Nahant for 
the rest of the summer, and I shall attend no celebrations, 
political or otherwise, in spite of what the newspapers say. 
To my great astonishment, President Quincy asked me whether 
I did not intend to allow myself to run for Congress again 
this autumn. I replied that I had had too many years of that 
bondage to be disposed to put on the yoke again. I can im- 
agine nothing I should dislike more. Yes, one thing, — the 
Presidency of Harvard. I have been not a little annoyed at 
a revival of the old story that I was seriously talked of for 
that post. Some one has sent me a Sandwich 'Advocate' 




202 A MEMOIR OF 

with a whole column of my qualifications. A newspaper pro- 
posal to run me for Vice-President with Crittenden two years 
hence is more congenial, in the abstract. There is no Whig 
leader left for whom I have more regard than for him, or 
whom I would do more to help, — but he is seventy-one years 
old, none too strong, and, in spite of what Washington Hunt 
writes, I see no hope of the White House for him. President 
Quincy, I should have added, also surprised me by the mod- 
eration of his tone, said he did not differ from me so much as 
I might think, and that he was no approver of the course of 
certain persons, whom he characterized as monomaniacs, but 
whose names I do not mention, as he expressed a wish not to 
be quoted. 

[Oct. 22.] How are you going to vote ? Some of our local 
Whigs have been meeting at Parker's and getting up a little 
manifesto, proposing a resuscitation of a National Whig party 
and an independent stand at the coming State election. The 
address was sent to me to sign, but I wrote Hillard that, 
while I should probably vote as advised, I a little preferred to 
be one of the addressed and not one of the addressers. Per- 
sonally, I have my doubts. I suppose there is no question 
whatever that either Banks or Beach will be Governor, and I 
had rather vote for Beach than be either directly or indirectly 
responsible for the continued supremacy of Banks & Co. 
Nor shall I hesitate to support John T. Heard in preference 
to Burlingame. 

When his intention to vote for the Democratic can- 
didate for Congress became known, he was urged to 
preside at a public meeting of the latter' s supporters, 
without distinction of party. This he declined to do ; 
but he addressed to the managing committee a letter 
from which the following is an extract : — 

I had desired and designed to keep myself aloof from poli- 
tics during the present campaign. But observing a willing- 






ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 203 

ness in some quarters to draw my position into doubt, owino- 
to the absence of my name from the signatures to the recent 
Whig address, I cannot hesitate to avow the intention which 
I long ago formed in regard to the particular subject of your 
meeting. I have an unchangeable conviction that intemper- 
ate antislavery agitation has been a source of a very large 
part of the troubles by which our country has been disturbed 
and harassed for some years past ; that it has done nothing 
to advance any real interest of freedom, but has provoked and 
stimulated not a few of the very measures against which it 
was ostensibly aimed; that it has impeded and obstructed 
all other measures for the prosperity and welfare of the 
people ; and that there is little hope of any useful or practical 
legislation being successfully attempted until Congress shall 
cease to be a mere ring for the prize-fights of proslavery and 
antislavery agitators. It is for the highest interest of the 
whole country that there should be an end of this sectional 
strife, and I know not how this result can be more effectively 
promoted than by granting at least a temporary furlough to 
those of the combatants who, by disposition, or principle, or 
antecedent circumstances or connections, are most strongly 
inclined to prolong and aggravate that strife. This considera- 
tion alone is sufficient to determine my choice between the 
only two candidates for Congress in my District, and it is 
hardly necessary for me to add that my vote will be given for 
Colonel Heard. 

On the night of the State election (November 2), when 
the returns sufficiently indicated a Republican victory, 
Henry Wilson made a triumphant speech on the steps 
of the Parker House, in which he referred to the above 
letter as follows : — 

" We have been told by Mr. Winthrop that he wanted to 
put the antislavery agitators, among them Mr. Burlingame, 
on the retired list. He wanted to give him a furlough. The 






204 A MEMOIR OF 

people of this district have not given Mr. Burlingame a fur- 
lough ; but the people of Massachusetts have given Mr. Robert 
C. Winthrop a perpetual discharge ! {Loud cheering.) Gen- 
tlemen, we have ever been liberal and generous. We have 
invited to our ranks men from every party. We have given 
them all the honors we could bestow. Over and over again 
we have tendered to Mr. Winthrop our support. We have 
offered to put in his hands our banner: he has scornfully 
turned aside. He now proposes to give a furlough to the agi- 
tators, as he chooses to call the men who have resisted every 
demand of the slave power, before which he quailed, and for 
his conduct in regard to which the people of tins State have 
sent him into perpetual retirement." 

To this Mr. Winthrop made no public rejoinder, but 
he alluded to it in a private letter thus : — 

[Nov. 6.] I did not vote the whole Democratic ticket, and 
I am not much readier than you are to indorse the entire 
policy of Buchanan and his party. Indeed, I could not go 
the length of the Whig address, which declared a sweeping 
purpose to defeat every Republican candidate whatsoever, 
whether moderate or radical. As to Wilson's anathemas, 
they are inconsistent, to say the least. If I ' quailed,' as he 
says, ' before the slave power,' surely I was an improper per- 
son to be intrusted with his ' banner.' Aside from this, it is 
a figure of speech to say I refused ' scornfully.' I considered, 
and still consider, his offer to have been a nattering one. 
Had I been a soldier of fortune, I should have closed with it 
and claimed my pay ; but, while never a Conscience-Whig, I 
have always been troubled with a conscience, and this, Ken- 
nedy says, is the worst complaint from which a politician can 
suffer. I have sometimes smiled to think what wry faces 
would have been visible in some quarters had I appeared 
booted and spurred in the Republican camp, wielding a baton 
of command. I should have received a warm welcome from 
some old friends, but I co"ld never have satisfied the ultras. 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 205 

I was born a Conservative ; and if I may venture to compare 
myself to my betters, I have in me something of the Hampden 
and the Falkland, but not a particle of the Cromwell. I re- 
ceived from anonymous sources several savage newspaper 
attacks upon my letter, but two leaders in the New York 
' Tribune,' though a little ribald, were very funny, and were 
doubtless written by Congdon, who has a knack at such things, 
though he will never do anything so good as that scathing 
article on Sumner which first gave him celebrity. Bob writes 
me from Europe that he accidentally stumbled on an old New 
York ' Herald,' in which my School Festival speech of last 
summer (a modest little mi lk-and- watery affair, as I thought) 
was a good deal derided. I can forgive the ' Herald ' this, be- 
cause it has done good service in showing up Seward's late 
utterances at Rome and Rochester. They are the most signifi- 
cant things of the day, and should be pondered by all who are 
halting between two opinions. 

By way of giving both sides, I here insert the greater 
part of the " Tribune " articles just mentioned : — 

" Winthrop' s Last Word. 

"Amateur patriotism is, abstractly considered, one of the 
most fascinating and classical of virtues. But in this country 
amateur patriotism is at a discount. . . . That the people 
of the Northern States — educated, thoughtful, intelligent, 
honest, and religious — are all wrong, and that Mr. Robert 
C. Winthrop, of Boston, in the State of Massachusetts, is 
all right, is one of those phenomena, whether regarded as 
intellectual, moral, or political, which fill the mind with 
awe. ... Our readers may remember a gentleman of the 
name of Robert C. Winthrop, — a gentleman who lives in 
a very genteel square in a very genteel locality in the 
very genteel city of Boston. Quite up, you must know; 
miles away from vulgar people; in a very good house; 
with a very good library; and good pictures; and two 



206 A MEMOIR OF 

cloaks; and other comfortable tilings. That this gentleman 
upon the eve of an election should shuffle himself from 
his genteel shelf, and write a refined letter in defence of 
genteel politics, is not half so wonderful as that he should 
write the letter aforesaid to Col. Isaac H. Wright, a Mexi- 
can colonel of a Massachusetts regiment, and therefore not, 
ex officio, a genteel personage. But Mr. Winthrop has done 
it, — bless his honest and self-sacrificing soul! Was this a 
moment for etiquette ? A glorious Union endangered, — the 
proud fabric of our political liberties shaking as with a shak- 
ing palsy, — was this a moment in which to hesitate ? Not 
a bit of it. Mr. Winthrop jumped out of bed, where he 
has been for the last five years. Mr. Winthrop put on his 
dressing-gown ; Mr. Winthrop grasped his best pen ; and 
Mr. Winthrop wrote to Colonel Wright, — Colonel Wright 
of the Mexican army ! And what did Mr. Winthrop write ? 
Listen to his words : ' I have an unchangeable conviction 
that intemperate antislavery agitation has been the source of 
a very large part of the troubles by which our country has 
been disturbed and harassed for some time past!' What 
troubles, O Robert? Financial, religious, or political, O my 
Winthrop ? When a man has an ' unchangeable conviction,' 
it should be about something. Take off your nightcap, 
mio Boberto ! and let us reason together. When you came 
into public life, reverend sir, antislavery principles were in 
fashion. You were the decus and sixpenny tutamen of your 
Whig party. Of antislavery opinions you were wont to utter 
a few, not many, but enough. Think, if yon are right 
now, how wrong you must have been then ! Yours was of 
course ' temperate ' agitation ; but did it not pave and smooth 
and level the way for the ' intemperate ' ? You were never 
very warm; but you were never, as you are now, happily, 
sweetly, safely, and delightfully refrigerant. We will not 
look too closely into the details of the past. You bolted 
when you thought it best to bolt, just as you stuck by Free- 
dom and Massachusetts opinion when you thought it best to 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 207 

stick by them. Are you moved, my Robert ? Try, then, to 
be what you once were. Try to be worthy of that great his- 
torical wealth of ancestry which is yours. You cut but a 
sorry figure when you are writing to such folk as Mr. Isaac 
H. Wright, colonel and auctioneer, represents. You make 
us think of the Frenchman in the basket, midway between 
heaven and earth, as described in a novel called 'Pelham.' 
You will never have a good digestion and a sound liver until 
you make up your mind. Do so, O Robert, and write to us 
a letter ! " 

"The Result in Massachusetts. 

" The returns from Massachusetts are exceedingly refresh- 
ing. The Republicans carry everything. Banks is re-elected 
Governor by over 30,000. Amos A. Lawrence, the 'American' 
candidate, is left so dismally out in the cold that he will one 
day be obliged to procure affidavits that he was ever a candi- 
date at all. There is little necessity for recapitulating the 
details. Rather be it our pleasing task to wipe the tears from 
the eyes of the mourners, to pour oil into their wounds, and 
to bid them, as citizens, as Christians, as patriots, to be- 
ware of suicide. The party-colored combination of Venerable 
Winers, of Democrats not at all venerable, of all the sick and 
the sour, the halt and the blind, of the fretful, the fussy, and 
the nervous, is in a most distressing condition. Here has 
been a desperate effort to rescue Massachusetts from the 
Philistines. Money has been spent. But why should we 
talk of filthy lucre? Talent, intellectual vigor, classical 
knowledge, sublime self-sacrifice, and the Boston 'Courier,' 
have all been thrown away. It has been proved over and 
over again, to the satisfaction of everybody except about 
seventy thousand voters, that unless Massachusetts gives up 
her nonsensical philanthropy, her expensive honesty, her ridi- 
culous love of right, and her stupendously foolish hatred of 
wrong, the dome of the State House would fall in, crushing 
the statue of Washington by Chantrey, and the stuffed cod- 



2 OS A MEMOIR OF 

fish in Representatives Hall by an unknown artist, burying a 
considerable portion of Beacon Street under the ruins, and 
filling up forever the Frog Pond on the Common. To avert 
this dire catastrophe, Mr. Robert C. Winthrop wrote the cele- 
brated and vigorous epistle to which we have already given 
immortality. To avert this, Mr. Rufus Choate, by particular 
desire of his party, by a resolute, praiseworthy, and almost 
incomprehensible effort, refrained from making any speeches 
during the campaign. To avert this, sundry solid citizens 
unbuttoned their pockets, took out their pocket-books, and 
planked their money without a groan. Ben Hallett — to give 
a single instance of the astonishing pot-pourri — figured for 
one night only upon the same platform with Prof. Benjamin 
Peirce of the august University of Harvard, who saw on 
Sunday more stars than he ever saw before ; Isaac H. Wright, 
the Mexican brave; and Charles Theodore Russell, whose 
middle name affords the only indication that he is the gift 
of God! 

" Alas, that we should be compelled to record the failure 
of so much gallantry, self-sacrifice, letter-writing, and speech- 
making ! That lavender-scented aristocrats should get into 
bed with malodorous loafers ; that nice nobility, with un- 
plugged nostrils, should meander in mud and perambulate 
the dangerous districts to the utter ruin of its varnished 
boots , that Demosthenes, Hyperides, Cicero, Pitt, and Can- 
ning (these eminent men still live in Boston, although popu- 
larly supposed by the rest of the world to be dead) should 
pour forth floods of eloquence ; that George Lunt, the modern 
Junius, should write some hundreds of columns awful to look 
upon, and still more awful to read, — and all in vain ! We 
are going to ruin, and no mistake ! We see the ' demnition 
bow-wows ' in the distance. We see the vortex, the mael- 
strom, the eddies, the quicksands, the rocks, the breakers. 
' Man the lifeboat ! ' should be upon every white and 
trembling lip in Boston and the demesnes adjacent. For 
Church is nodding to State, and State is returning the 



ROBERT C. WIXTHROP. 209 

compliment. Respectability has retired, for the purpose of 

committing felo de se. The Boston ' Courier ' alone stands 

firm. 

' We a little longer wait ; 

But how little none can know ! ' 

"It may be uncivil, and even brutal, for us to indulge 
in the language of exultation. But our opinion being that 
Massachusetts Hunkerism is nine-tenths dead, we beg pardon 
of the fraction still living while we say that the Massachusetts 
Republicans have done nobly. They have not merely con- 
quered, but they have conquered wisely. The returns show 
that they are not merely powerful numerically, but that they 
are fast becoming powerful morally. The Dark Lantern 
candle has ceased to smoulder, — it has even ceased to smell ; 
for which we, even at this distance of three hundred miles, 
are sufficiently grateful." 

On the 7th of April, 1859, Mr. Winthrop delivered 
before the Young- Men's Christian Association of Boston 
a long and elaborate address entitled " Christianity, 
neither Sectarian nor Sectional, the Great Remedy for 
Social and Political Evils ;' : and on the 13th of May, 
in the Boston Music Hall, a lecture on " Luxury and 
the Fine Arts," in aid of the fund for Ball's equestrian 
statue of Washing-ton. 1 

[April 11.] I labored hard over what you call my first 
sermon ; and if I ever tried to do good in my life, it was in 
that effort. I am conscious of having made a deep impression, 
and of having exerted a greater amount of immediate power 
upon my audience than perhaps ever before. Hillard, Felton, 

1 The former of these two addresses was also delivered in Richmond, 
Virginia, the latter in Baltimore ; but he declined invitations to repeat 
them in other parts of the country because he found that the repetition 
of his own productions palled upon him. " It is difficult [he wrote] to 
get up the requisite vim a second time. I envy Everett his unrivalled 
faculty in this respect." 

14 



210 A MEMOIR OF 

Joel Parker, Dr. Frothingliam, and Chandler Robbins were 
among the most earnest and cordial of my congratulators, 
while Dr. Blagden and my own assistant rector, Cotton 
Smith, applauded to the echo. So you see I could not have 
been very illiberal, or very loose, in nry theology. Some one 
has sent me two different numbers of the New York ' Journal 
of Commerce ' containing very glowing compliments from a 
writer who appears to have been present. I have more than 
once had misgivings that I mistook my vocation. My brother 
William (much my senior and the flower of our family) of his 
own accord studied for the ministry, and it was a grief to my 
mother that he did not live to be ordained. In her last ill- 
ness (I was then a Sophomore) she expressed a hope that, 
after graduating, I would follow his example, if the way 
seemed clear before me, which it did not. I was ambitious 
then, with a temperament ill suited to a round of parish duties ; 
but I have since felt that in the pulpit I might gradually 
have become an influence for good beside wliich all other 
successes of my life would have been paltry. At all events, 
I should not have preached politics or transcendentalism. 

[May 12.] My fiftieth anniversary ! I had three delight- 
ful days with Kennedy in Baltimore, three more with Rives 
at Castle Hill, and my addresses in Richmond and Baltimore 
were delivered to full and appreciative houses. Our long- 
deferred trip to Europe is now practically settled, and we 
expect to sail next month. Before going, I shall resign my 
vice-presidency of the Tract Society here. I wrote Seth 
Bliss more than a year ago that antislavery essays did not 
rightfully enter into our province, and would be fatal to the 
unity and usefulness of the Society. I now feel even more 
strongly on this subject, and believe that such publications 
only inflame the Southern mind, and retard the very reforms 
they are intended to promote. They undoubtedly contain 
a great deal of abstract truth ; but one cannot expect the 
Southern people to consider abstract truths when they are 
continually made the subject of outrageous tirades in North- 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 211 

em newspapers. I have always held that the great problem 
of American slavery should be approached in a serious and 
solemn spirit, not in violence and vituperation. It is no 
answer to say that Southern newspapers are often equally 
vituperative. They are a hot-blooded race, and their property 
is at stake. I wonder how we should feel if our property 
was at stake, here in New England. If civil war comes, we 
shall lose many brave men in the field, but our homes are too 
far away to be reached by the enemy, and our mills will 
undoubtedly make money by army contracts. I abhor the 
prospect of great fortunes so acquired. 

Mr. Winthrop's second visit to Europe lasted about 
fifteen months ; and though at times clouded by news 
of family bereavements and by serious illnesses of 
members of his party, yet he greatly enjoyed the oppor- 
tunities afforded him of meeting old friends, of making 
new ones, and of visiting famous countries he had never 
seen. Among other interesting experiences, he had a 
private audience of Pius IX. in the Vatican, and a 
pleasant hour with Cavour in the Foreign Office in 
Turin, on both which occasions those eminent Italians 
discussed public affairs with a good deal of freedom. 
At Vienna, in the autumn of 1859, he stumbled upon 
Senator Seward, fresh from the Holy Land, and together 
they had a private audience of the Emperor Francis 
Joseph, and longer interviews with leading Austrian 
statesmen. Mr. Winthrop and Mr. Seward were not 
extravagant admirers of each other's political course, 
but their personal relations had always been amicable, 
and they now had many long talks upon the state of 
things at home, when Mr. Seward's cheerful optimism 
was exhibited in marked contrast to Mr. Winthrop's 
pervading dread of civil war. The latter shared the 



Y 



212 A MEMOIR OF 

prevailing impression that Seward would receive the 
Republican nomination for the Presidency in the fol- 
lowing summer, and he thought him fairly entitled 
to it, though he subsequently made up his mind that 
Abraham Lincoln was the abler man of the two and 
the more adroit political manager. Before his return 
home, Mr. Winthrop received from President Buchanan 
a commission to represent the United States at the 
Statistical Congress in London, but his engagements 
on the Continent prevented him from accepting it. 

[Boston, Oct. 1, I860.] I got home not feeling very well, 
with a thousand matters to attend to and no relish for speech- 
making, but I made a point of making public adhesion to the 
National Union nominations, and my remarks seem to have 
been appreciated by our friends. The great game of Sumner, 
Wilson, and Co. is to show up John Bell's record and make him 
out an ultra proslavery man. I spiked one of their guns by 
pointing out that if he voted against the abolition of slavery 
in the District of Columbia, so did Abraham Lincoln. I am 
told there has been published at the South a Breckinridge 
pamphlet proving both Bell and Everett to be downright 
Free-Soilers. Try, if you can, to procure for me a copy of it, 
and I will file it with a Charleston ' Mercury ' I received in 
Europe, which spurned the idea of there being any real Con- 
servatism at the North, and singled me out as an 'Abolitionist 
in disguise,' — a charge which carried me back to the contest 
for the Speakership. This time it was probably in answer to a 
droll suggestion in a Texas paper that I should run for Vice- 
President with Sam Houston. If Lincoln be chosen, which 
seems not unlikely, you and I must do what we can to pre- 
vent mischief,, but I fear there will be more than we or any- 
body else can manage. I believe him to be at heart a mod- 
erate man ; and if Southern Senators and Representatives 
would only keep their tempers, things might not go along as 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 21 



o 



badly as they fear. The clanger is that, in the first flush of 
such an election, madness will rule the hour. 

The speech alluded to in the foregoing letter was 
made by Mr. Winthrop in the Boston Music Hall, Sept. 
25, 1860. In it, after paying a warm tribute to John 
Bell and Edward Everett, he spoke of Mr. Lincoln with 
kindness and appreciation. I quote a single passage on 
another subject : — 

I shall not soon forget the emotions with which I received 
at Vienna, last November, the first tidings of that atrocious 
affair at Harper's Ferry. They came in the form of a brief 
telegraphic despatch, without details, without explanations, 
simply announcing that an armed and organized band of abo- 
lition conspirators had taken forcible possession of a National 
Arsenal, in furtherance of a concerted insurrection of the 
blacks, and that blood had already begun to flow. I think 
there could have been no true American heart in Europe at 
that moment that did not throb and thrill with horror at that 
announcement. But I confess to have experienced emotions 
hardly less deep or distressing, when I read, not long after- 
wards, an account of a meeting — in this very hall, I believe 
— at which the gallows at Charlestown, in Virginia, was 
likened to the Cross of Calvary, and at which it was openly 
declared that the ringleader of that desperate and wicked 
conspiracy was right. Sir, if it had been suggested to me 
then that before another year had passed away, the presiding 
officer of that meeting would have been deliberately nomi- 
nated by the Republican party of Massachusetts for the Chief 
Magistracy of the Commomvealth, I should have repelled the 
idea as not within the prospect of belief, — as utterly trans- 
cending any pitch of extravagance which even the wildest 
and most ultra members of that party had ever prepared us to 
anticipate. But the nomination is before us. The candidate, 
I am told, is a most amiable and respectable gentleman, and 



214 A MEMOIR OF 

I have no wish to say an unkind word of him or of those who 
indorse him. But I should be false to every impulse of my 
heart, if being here at all this evening, if opening my lips at 
all during this campaign, I did not enter my humble protest, 
— as one to whom the cause of Christianity and of social 
order is dear, as one who would see the Word of God and the 
laws of the land respected and obeyed, — if I did not enter 
my earnest protest against such an attempt to give the seem- 
ing sanction of the people of Massachusetts to sentiments so 
impious and so abominable. 

The echoes of this momentous general election had 
hardly subsided before Mr. Winthrop again found him- 
self under the impending shadow of a great domestic 
sorrow. His wife had experienced in Europe a trouble- 
some affection of the eye, but she now began to develop 
disquieting symptoms of an internal malady which in 
the following spring proved fatal. Her health, how- 
ever, declined slowly, and he endeavored to distract his 
thoughts by anxious consideration of the critical condition 
of the country. His hurried diary mentions repeated con- 
sultations in Mr. Everett's library, where were sometimes 
present such men as Nathan and William Appleton, 
Joseph Grinnell, John H. Clifford, Peleg Sprague, Jacob 
Bigelow, George Ticknor, and Benjamin R. Curtis, — 
correspondence with Crittenden, Rives, and other friends 
in Border States, or with moderate men of different par- 
ties in other parts of the country, — all in the hope of 
devising some scheme for the peaceful preservation of 
the Union. On the 23d of January, 1861, Mr. Everett 
and he started for Washington, heading the delegation 
in charge of the great Boston petition for a Compromise, 
signed by nearly 15,000 legal voters, a petition forcibly, 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 215 

if irreverently, described by Mr. Sumner as " mere 
wind, — nothing better than a penny-whistle in a 
tempest." I find among Mr. Winthrop's papers memo- 
randa of conversations he then had at the capital with 
public men of all shades of opinion — among them 
President Buchanan, ex-President Tyler, Vice-President 
Breckinridge, Generals Scott and Cass, Mr. Justice Mc- 
Lean, Senators Pearce, Seward, Douglas, Mason, Hunter, 
Wilson and Slidell, together with many members of the 
House, including Charles Francis Adams, with whose 
moderate statesmanlike course, as he considered it, at 
this juncture, Mr. Winthrop was greatly pleased, and all 
the more so because he had differed very widely from 
him in the past. 1 

Seward, too, showed, he thought, a conciliatory spirit, 
but, on the whole, he returned to Boston greatly dis- 
heartened, feeling that the extreme men of both sections 
were bent on precipitating disunion and likely to have 
their way. In a published letter of the 19th of February 
excusing himself from accepting an invitation to speak 
at a great Union meeting at Troy, N. Y., he wrote : 

The newly elected President is passing through your city 
while I write, on his way to the national capital. He must 
be more or less than man if he does not feel deeply the weight 
of responsibility which rests upon him. Let him not fail to be 
assured that from us who have voted against him, as from 
those who have voted for him, he may confidently rely on a 

1 I find among his papers a newspaper report of a speech of Mr. 
Blaine's in Cincinnati long afterward, in which Mr. Adams is charged 
with having been guilty of both cowardice and treason in the winter of 
1861, and with having excited in the mind of Abraham Lincoln a " thrill 
of horror." To this Mr. Winthrop has added, " I do not believe such an 
assertion would have been ventured had Lincoln been still living." 






/ 



216 A MEMOIR OF 

generous sympathy and support in every just and reasonable 
measure which he may adopt, to maintain the Constitution of 
the country. If we can do little to strengthen the arm of 
authority at a moment like this, let us be careful to do nothing 
to weaken it by any poor partisan opposition. Let us hope 
that he will adopt a policy which will enable us to rally 
around him without reserve, in upholding the government 
over which he has been called to preside. Let us hope that 
he will take counsel of moderate and forbearing men, — of 
men of more than one idea; of men who will prefer a united 
country to a united party ; of men who had rather be found 
inconsistent with themselves than inconsistent with the safety 
of the Republic. 

Early in March his wife's condition became more 
critical, and after prolonged suffering, borne with un- 
failing patience and thought for others, she died on the 
26th of April, 1861, shortly after the surrender of Fort 
Sumter. Like so many other men, in early life he had 
occasionally tried his hand at verse, and though he soon 
became convinced that nature had not intended him for 
a poet, yet now and then in leisure hours — more par- 
ticularly in hours of sorrow — his thoughts would some- 
times find expression in a hymn, a sonnet, or a metrical 
translation. He had never been sufficiently satisfied 
with any one of these effusions to allow it to go into 
print, but towards the close of this summer, having 
written a patriotic hymn for the National Fast, it 
occurred to him to send it anonymously to a newspaper 
and see what became of it. He was agreeably surprised 
to find it reproduced in different parts of the country 
with words of commendation, and as it has never been 
included in his works, I here insert it : — 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 217 

HYMN FOR THE NATIONAL FAST. 
September 26, 1861. 



With humbled hearts, great God, this day, 
Before Thy throne we sorrowing stand ; 

Oh, hear our prayer, forgive our sins, 
And turn Thy judgments from our land. 

Our fathers placed their trust in Thee, 
And Thou didst lead them like a flock ; 

Through Thee they stemmed the wintry waves, 
Through Thee they braved the battle's shock. 

Be to the sons once more, O God, 
As to their sires Thou wert so long ; 

Revive our faith, rebuke our fears, 
And let us in Thy might be strong. 

The clouds which thicken o'er our path, 

'T is Thine alone to chase away ; 
Oh, show the brightness of Thy face, 

And turn our darkness into day ! 

Pour forth Thy Spirit, gracious Lord, 

To help us in this hour of need ; 
Appease the rage which rends our land, 

And bid its wounds no longer bleed. 

In vain we burnish sword or shield, 

"Without a blessing from on high ; 
If radiant with no smite from Thee, 

In vain our banners sweep the sky. 

Give counsel to our chosen chiefs, 

Give courage to our marsh all'd bands ; 

Let prayer and faith and trust in God 

Inflame their hearts and nerve their hands ! 

In no resentment let them strike ; 

No hatred stain their holy cause ; 
But consecrated be each arm 

To Union, Freedom, and the Laws ! 



* 



213 A MEMOIR OF 

And, oh, in Thine own time, restore 
Good-will and peace from sea to sea ; 

And in each brother's breast revive 

The love that springs from love to Thee ! 

So may our land, from danger freed, 

With one consent Thy mercy own ; 
And every knee and heart be bent 

In grateful homage at Thy throne. 

' Not unto us, not unto us,' — 

In joyful chorus then we '11 sing, — 
'But all the glory, all the praise, 

Be unto Thee, our God and King! ' 

It was a favorite idea of his that the real purpose 
of such services is often misconceived, and in one of 
the commonplace books in which he sometimes jotted 
down opinions of men and things, I find the following 
reflections : — 

Not a few of the clergy appear to mistake the character and 
object of a National Fast. Their sermons often seem to indi- 
cate that such a day had been appointed in order to enable 
them to open the flood-gates of pulpit politics, — that they 
might discuss the condition of public affairs and give us the 
benefit of their counsel. Nothing could be farther, in my 
judgment, from the true design and use of these occasions. 
If an earthquake had laid a city (like Lisbon) in ruins, and a 
fast had been proclaimed, it would not be the province of 
the clergy to give discourses on the history and origin of 
earthquakes. If the cholera, or some new cohort (nova cohors, 
Hot.) of fevers were sweeping over the land, and a day of 
humiliation and prayer were proclaimed, the clergy would not 
be called on to give us a diagnosis of the disease, or to discuss 
the different modes of treating it. And so, to my mind, it 
seems greatly out of place for the pulpit to be employed on 
such a day in treating of the nature and causes of our politi- 



ROBERT C. WIXTHROP. 219 

cal troubles. The one great idea should be a nation on its 
knees, acknowledging its own sins, confessing the impotence 
of all human wisdom for such an emergency, and imploring 
the Divine aid. "We boasted of our independence so long 
that we almost began to imagine ourselves independent of 
God. Such a day should inculcate the doctrine of subordina- 
tion to Divine Government and dependence on Divine protec- 
tion. There is a worse sort of secession than that from any 
human authority or any earthly imion, and there has been too 
much evidence in our recent national career that a presump- 
tuous self-reliance was usurping the place of that old trust in 
God which characterized the founders of our Republic. 

The Civil War which Mr. Winthrop had foreboded 
was now in full blast, and his position with regard to it 
was briefly this. Although he had always scouted the 
doctrines of secession, he was a believer in that abstract 
right of Revolution so succinctly set forth by Abraham 
Lincoln in his celebrated speech in the House of Repre- 
sentatives, Jan. 12, 1848 : — 

" Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the 
power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing 
government, and form a new one that suits them better. . . . 
Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people 
of an existing government may choose to exercise it. Any 
portion of such people that can, may revolutionize and make 
their own of so much of the territory as they inhabit. More 
than this, a majority of any portion of such people may revo- 
lutionize, putting down a minority mingled with or near about 
them, who may oppose their movements." 



In conformity to this general view, Mr. Winthrop 
considered the Southern people fully entitled to try to 
achieve their independence if they saw fit ; but he be- 
lieved them profoundly mistaken in thinking that such 



y- 



f 



220 A MEMOIR OF 

a step, even if successful, would be for their advantage ; 
while, if unsuccessful, it legitimately involved, in his 
opinion, not merely loss of life, but confiscation of 
property and condign punishment. He was equally 
clear that it was the bounden duty of President Lin- 
coln to vindicate the authority of the general govern- 
ment, and alike the duty and the interest of the 
Northern people to support him energetically in main- 
taining the Constitution and the laws. For any attempt, 
however, direct or indirect, to convert a war for the 
Constitution and the Union into an Emancipation Cru- 
sade, he had no feeling but that of reprobation. On the 
8th of October, at the desire of Senator Wilson, and at 
the particular request of some of the latter' s friends who 
had procured a standard for his regiment (the Twenty- 
Second Massachusetts), Mr. Winthrop presented this 
standard to that regiment on Boston Common, and 
made a patriotic speech entitled " The Flag of the 
Union," part of which was long familiar to schoolboys. 1 
At its close, Senator Sumner, who was among his audi- 
ence, came forward and offered his hand, which Mr. 
Winthrop took, and so ended a memorable feud of more 
than sixteen years' duration. 2 Not long afterward he 
received a letter from Secretary Seward asking him to 

1 The Providence "Journal" printed this speech with the heading, 
" Dawn of the Millennium : Robert C. Winthrop presents a standard to 
Henry Wilson ! " 

2 If Mr. Winthrop did not always find it easy to forget, he liked to 
forgive and be forgiven. lie had previously " made up " with Andrew 
Johnson and Robert Toombs, who, in the mean time, had conceived a 
furious dislike of each other. Of the three (Sumner, Johnson, and 
Toombs), the one most congenial to him socially, in spite of all that 
had passed, was the last-named, whose reported boast that he would one 
day call the roll of his slaves on Bunker Hill is one of those legends fab- 
ricated in the ante-bellvm period in order " to fire the Northern heart." 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 221 

come to Washington on public business, which he forth- 
with did, and found that a scheme was on foot for 
sending abroad, at the expense of the government, a few 
gentlemen whose names were well known, in order that 
they might mingle with leading men in London and 
Paris, and counteract, if possible, the influence of South- 
ern emissaries, who were known to be very active. Five 
gentlemen, including Mr. Winthrop, were originally 
offered these positions, the others being Mr. Everett, 
Mr. John P. Kennedy, Archbishop Hughes of New York, 
and Bishop Mcllvaine of Ohio. Upon this subject Mr. 
Winthrop had several conversations with Mr. Seward 
and a long one with President Lincoln ; and though he 
expressed an entire willingness to go if the latter really 
wished him to do so, yet his inclination was decidedly 
against it, partly owing to his recent domestic affliction, 
partly from a feeling that the quasi-official position 
of such agents might not be wholly agreeable to our 
accredited ministers to England and France. In this 
latter view both Mr. Everett and Mr. Kennedy con- 
curred ; and as, just at this time, Mr. Seward received 
more encouraging news from Europe, the project was 
temporarily withdrawn, though, in the following month, 
Archbishop Hughes and Bishop Mcllvaine went out. 1 
Mr. Winthrop has left notes, taken at the time, of 
this trip to Washington, with memoranda of conver- 
sations with General Scott, General Robert Anderson, 
Attorney-General Bates, Mr. Secretary Chase, Mr. Jus- 

1 In the first volume of the second series of the Proceedings of this 
Society (pp. 202-210) will be found a longer account of the matter, 
communicated by Mr. Winthrop in 1884, in consequence of certain in- 
accuracies in the Autobiography of Thurlow Weed published after the 
latter's death. 



222 A MEMOIR OF 

tice Wayne, Lord Lyons, and others. In a conversation 
with President Lincoln upon another subject, the latter 
read to him a confidential letter he had just finished, 
vindicating the course he had pursued with reference 
to General Fremont's abolition proclamation ; and when 
Mr. Winthrop expressed his cordial approbation of its 
tone, Mr. Lincoln remarked dryly, "There is a good 
deal of old Whig left in me yet." 

[Dec. 3, 1861.] I never wake up in the morning nowa- 
days without asking what I can do for my country, but I 
rarely get a satisfactory answer. . . . When you see the 
President tell him the only satisfaction I have had for a month 
past has been in reading his calm, plain, and excellent mes- 
sage, full of wisdom and moderation, and a welcome rebuke 
to the extravagance of some of his friends. How Petigru 
looms up above the standard of common heroes ! I had a 
noble letter from him before the mails were cut off. Mason 
and Slidell have only themselves to thank for their imprison- 
ment, but I wish I felt as well satisfied that the arrest of 
Morehead and Faulkner was for equally good reasons. I 
tried to see them at Fort Warren, but could not get permis- 
sion. 1 William Appleton has had a letter from Faulkner 
which makes us feel that his case is a hard one, and I have 
since heard that both his daughter and Mrs. Morehead are 

O 

seriously ill. Meantime a most miserable clamor has been 
raised because I and others sent down some wine to old 
friends, and interested ourselves in providing the common 
prisoners with overcoats. One malignant sheet calls us sym- 
pathizers with rebellion, and threatens to send our names to 
the Secretary of State ! Pray let Seward understand what a 
malicious spirit of defamation and misrepresentation prevails 

1 Charles S. Morehead, ex-Governor of Kentucky, who had served with 
the writer in Congress, and Charles J. Faulkner of Virginia, ex-Minister 
to France. 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 223 

in this quarter. Language is often used which suggests 
rather the ferocity of a tribe of Apache Indians than the 
sentiments of an educated and self-respecting community. 
I am glad you like my memoir of Nathan Appleton. It was 
his own desire that I should write it, and it beguiled many 
gloomy hours. 

For the next three years Mr. "Winthrop was a good 
deal of an invalid. He had never been a robust man, 
and his fresh complexion gave the impression of better 
health than he often enjoyed. Latterly, the strain upon 
him of his wife's long illness and death, the compara- 
tive loneliness which had succeeded it, his distress at 
the condition of the country, too sedentary a mode of 
life, and too much brain-work, had all combined to 
subject him to attacks of insomnia, which gradually 
became persistent, and which were sometimes attended 
by no inconsiderable amount of physical debility and 
mental depression. Medical advice, with frequent 
change of air and scene, worked only a partial relief ; 
but his condition w r as never such as to confine him to 
the house, and by an effort of will he continued to take 
an active part in the management of the numerous in- 
stitutions with which he was connected, occasionally 
speaking in public, and even undertaking some new 
duties, among them service as Chairman of the Relief 
Committee of the Massachusetts Soldiers' Fund. At a 
public meeting in the Merchants' Exchange, in Feb- 
ruary, 1862, he paid a tribute to William Appleton, 
and one to President Felton in the following month, at 
a meeting of this Society. At the anniversary of the 
American Tract Society, May 27, 1862, he made a 
speech entitled " Tracts for the Soldiers," which attained 



224 A MEMOIR OF 

the distinction, or the infamy (according to one's point 
of view), of being stigmatized by an Antislavery Con- 
vention as "quasi-treasonable." I have room but for 
a single paragraph : — 

If there be ' a devil in secession,' as a fearless Tennessee 
patriot has recently told us, we all know what is the only 
power which has ever succeeded in casting out devils. It 
was not the power of Beelzebub; nor was it the power of man. 
No military stratagems, no civil statesmanship, no policy of 
man's device, no wholesale confiscations or emancipations, can 
reach it. It came of old, and it must come again, from higher 
than human sources or influences. We must look, in God's 
good time, for a spirit of reconciliation, breathed forth from 
the very throne of the Most High, to turn back our hearts 
to each other and to Himself; and we must invite it, and 
invoke it, and prepare the way for it, by all the instrumen- 
talities in our power. 

His remarks on the following day, at the anniversary 
of the Massachusetts Colonization Society, were equally 
distasteful in some quarters : — 

I am [said he] no advocate of any wholesale projects of 
emancipation, — whether under the color of confiscation, or 
upon any pretence of the imaginary necessities of martial 
law. . . . President Lincoln, whose wisdom, moderation, and 
patriotism we all concur in acknowledging and admiring, — 
whether as exhibited in the measures he has taken to over- 
come the assaults of his enemies, or to overrule the mad and 
monstrous projects of some of his friends, — has urgently and 
repeatedly insisted, as we all remember, that a well-devised 
scheme of colonization is one of the great necessities of the 
present hour. I believe that, in so doing, he has expressed 
the opinion of nine-tenths of the people of the United States 
out of New England. 



ROBERT C. WIXTHROP. 225 

On the 2 2d of August, 1862, he spoke at short notice 
on Boston Common at a mass meeting in aid of recruit- 
ing. 1 Among other things, he said : — 

It is vain to review the past; we cannot recall it. It 
is vain to speculate on the future ; we cannot penetrate its 
hidden depths. It is vain, and worse than vain, to criticise 
and cavil about the present. We must have confidence in 
somebodj'. We must not only trust in God, but we must 
trust in the government which is over us, and in the generals 
whom that government has commissioned. . . . The stern 
and solemn fact is before us that three-quarters of a million 
of loyal men have been found inadequate to overcome the 
wanton and wicked rebellion which has lifted its parricidal 
hands against the nation. The stern and solemn fact is 
before us that although so many glorious successes have 
been accomplished, and so many deeds of heroic daring per- 
formed, our gallant army has recently encountered a series of 
checks and reverses which have once more put almost every- 
thing in peril. The stern and startling fact is before us and 
upon us, that the President has been constrained to call for 
twice 300,000 more men to rescue us from defeat, and to give 
us a hope of finishing successfully the herculean labor of 
restoring the national authority. Who can hesitate for a 
moment what answer shall be given to this call ? 

. . . But let us remember that we are not encracred in a 
war of the North against the South, but a war of the nation 
against those who have risen up to destroy it. Let us keep 
our eyes and our hearts steadily fixed upon the old flag of our 
fathers, — the same to-day as when it was first lifted in tri- 
umph at Saratoga, or first struck down in madness at Sumter. 
That flag tells our whole story. We must do whatever we 
do, and whatever is necessary to be done, with the paramount 

1 There were several platforms on the Common on this occasion, — 
Governor Andrew speaking at No. 1, Mr. Everett at No. 2, Mr. AVinthrop 
at No. 3. 

15 



226 A MEMOIR OF 

purpose of preserving it, untorn and untarnished, in all its 
radiance and in all its just significance. We must be true 
to every tint of its red, white, and blue. Behold it at this 
moment streaming from every window and watch-tower and 
cupola of our fair city ! It has a star for every State. Let 
us resolve that there shall still be a State for every star ! 

On the 9 tli of September he made another recruiting 
speech, this time in Faneuil Hall, having previously 
made one at Lenox, in Berkshire, where he had hap- 
pened to be staying; and on the 5th of November he 
made, by request, on Boston Common, a speech on the 
presentation of a flag to the Forty-Third Massachusetts, 
or "Tiger" regiment. In the preceding month (Octo- 
ber, 1862) he had served in New York as a delegate to 
the Triennial Convention of the Protestant Episcopal 
Church, where he had taken a very active part in de- 
bate, and where it was largely due to his influence and 
exertions that the Resolutions on the Condition of the 
Church as affected by the State of the Country were so 
worded as to pave the way for a complete reunion at 
the close of the Civil War. In 1863 he w r as much less 
w r ell ; but among his public utterances during that year 
were a speech in celebration of the birthday of Wash- 
ington, a tribute to Crittenden, one of the political and 
personal friends he most admired and respected, and an 
address entitled " Concordia," at the Triennial Festival 
of the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association. 1 

1 In January, 1861, President Quincy, Mr. Savage, Mr. Sparks, and 
Mr. Winthrop, meeting at the Harvard Observatory as members of the 
Visiting Committee, were informed that Mars was very near the earth, 
and that, owing to an error in the Ephemeris, Concordia could not be 
found; whereupon Mr. Winthrop suggested that the ancients would have 
been ready to ascribe our national troubles to these planetary influences; 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 227 

In the same year he retired from the Presidency of the 
Alumni of Harvard, after eight years' service, in which 
connection it is not inappropriate to quote a character- 
istic compliment paid him by Oliver Wendell Holmes, 
who presided at the Alumni Festival of 1860 owing to 
Mr. Winthrop's absence in Europe. 

" Your President [said Dr. Holmes] so graces every assembly 
which he visits, by his presence, his dignity, his suavity, his 
art of rulinsr, — whether it be the council of a nation, the 
legislature of a State, or the lively democracy of a dinner- 
table, — that, when he enters a meeting like this, it seems as 
if the chairs stood back of their own will to let him pass to 
the head of the board, and the table itself, that most intelli- 
gent of quadrupeds, the half-reasoning mahogany, tipped him 
a spontaneous welcome to its highest seat, and of itself rapped 
the assembly to order." 

I conclude this chapter with a few extracts from his 
private letters and diaries in 1862 and 1863 : — 

[Feb. 1, 1862.] "VVe have somehow or other lost the 
good-will of the world. We cannot do without it, and must 
make some sacrifices to recover it. A recognition of bellig- 
erency at an early moment is an offence, — but it is one we 
have often given to others, and is not in itself cause for war. 
In my judgment, the best way to avert recognition is by kind 
words abroad and strong blows at home. If it comes, let us 
treat it with a silent shrug, remembering how often we our- 
selves have patronized rebellions. You will be glad to know 
that Lord St. Germans wrote me that he had shown my 
letter to Lords Palmerston and Russell, and to the Duke of 
Newcastle. 

and finding on two subsequent visits to the Observatory that Concordia 
was still missing, he pleasantly alluded to the subject on this occasion, 
and named the speech accordingly. 



22S A MEMOIR OF 

[Aug. 21, 18G2.] I saw much of Washington Hunt at 
Niagara, and we ran down to Buffalo and dined sociably with 
Fillmore. At Saratoga I met Governor Morgan, Mr. Justice 
Wayne, Granger, and others ; while at West Point I had 
some long talks with Scott and Crittenden. The former said, 
ten days ago, that with the additional men called for by the 
President we oucdit to take Richmond and finish the war 
triumphantly. God grant this ; but it does not look like it 
for the moment. 

[Nov. 8, 18G2.] I have no tears to shed over the result in 
New York, though I do not sinsr ' mio Fernando.' The 

7 O O 

ultras have received a seasonable check. They were driving 
the engine over the precipice, and the people have put on the 
brakes. Seward will hardly wear mourning for this overturn, 
and Lincoln, if he is wise, will turn it to good account. My 
platform is, — Constitutionalism in Council, Vigor in action. 
I do not believe that blacks or whites are to be benefited by 
sudden and sweeping Acts of Emancipation. 

[Washington, April 25, 1863.] Saw the President at the 
White House. He mentioned, among other things, that his 
anxieties of mind had not affected his health, and that he 
weighed 180 pounds. Sat some little time with Seward at 
the State Department. Found him, as usual, full of hope. 

[Saratoga Springs, July 24, 1863.] I had some private 
talk on the hotel verandah with three public men who might 
not wish to be quoted. One said that the country is coming 
out stronger and richer than ever, — that half our debt (great 
as it is) is absorbed in currency, and that everything is pros- 
perous in spite of the war. Another said that everything is 
going wrong, and that nothing but a change of administration 
will bring 1 matters riedit. The third had come to the com- 
fortable conclusion that the contest will be brought to an end 
at no distant day, leaving things but little changed from their 
old status, aside from the loss of lives and treasure. I met 
with three equally different pictures of the war in my journey 
hither. In the train near Rutland were eight or ten private 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 229 

soldiers returning after the expiration of their term of service, 
evidently glad to get back, and full of stories of their experi- 
ences and of the death of comrades. They were succeeded 
near Castleton by as many more, freshly drafted, and on their 
way to the rendezvous, — intelligent, athletic young fellows, 
whose merriment seemed forced, and over whose countenances 
sad looks kept stealing. At another station was a group of 
women, young and old, all in tears at parting with another 
batch of recruits. Such scenes affect me deeply. 

[Sharon Springs, July 31, 1863. J Judge Edwards Pierre- 
pont called and described a recent interview he had with 
Seward, who (he said) is now greatly alarmed at our condi- 
tion and fears trouble with foreign nations. This is a not un- 
wholesome state of mind for Seward to be in, but I suspect it 
may be partly feigned to influence others. Pierrepont also 
described in detail a visit paid by him to the President on 
the Sunday before the issuing of the Emancipation Proclama- 
tion. He found Lincoln lying on a sofa, in a sort of yellow 
linen dressing-gown and embroidered slippers. After some 
conversation, he suddenly inquired of Judge P. what he 
thought of the Emancipation scheme, and then jumped up, 
gesticulating vehemently, and exclaimed, ' It is my last card, 
and I will play it and may win the trick.' Pierrepont said 
James Wadsworth was present on this occasion. 

[Newport, Aug. 31, 18G3.] By the doctor's orders I mingle 
in the gay throng, dine out three or four times a week, and 
look in at matinees and soirees ; but while I am none the worse 
for it, I greatly doubt if I am any better, and my nights con- 
tinue wretched. What I have most enjoyed lately has been 
reading the last volume of Washington Irving's Life. I 
found some letters in it from him to me, and one of them, 
which I had nearly forgotten, is quite a gem. Pierre Irving, 
however, is a little mistaken in his dates. I knew his uncle 
as early as 1840. Mercier, the French Minister, tells me he 
is opposed to any prolonged occupation of Mexico. 



230 A MEMOIR OF 



X. 

In 1861, by a family arrangement, Mr. Winthrop 
came into possession of a mass of letters and State 
papers, chiefly of the colonial period, which, together 
with those previously inherited by him from his father, 
constituted the largest collection of its kind in New 
England, and proved unexpectedly rich in new material 
of much historical value. Everything which did not im- 
mediately relate to Governor John Winthrop the elder, 
he placed at the disposal of this Society, in order that 
selections might be gradually printed for the use of 
students, and he actively co-operated in editing the 
first three volumes of such selections, besides separately 
communicating to our Proceedings many manuscripts 
of special interest. 1 It had long been his desire to 
write a Life of John Winthrop, toward which he had 
already made considerable preparation, and the dis- 
covery of this new matter enabled him to issue the first 
volume at the close of 1863. The task was a congenial 
one, but it entailed prodigious labor, as of all the 
puzzling handwritings of early colonial times that of 
Governor Winthrop is perhaps hardest to decipher, while 
the difficulty of supplying missing names and dates was 
very great. Resisting the temptation to furnish what 
is technically known as a " popular " Life of his subject, 

1 Up to the present time the Society has printed six separate volumes 
of selections from Mr. Winthrop's "Winthrop Papers," and one volume 
of selections from his " Bowdoin and Temple Papers." The equivalent of 
at least one other volume is to he found scattered through our Collections 
and Proceedings ; but much still remains to be done, as the mine is far 
from being exhausted. 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 231 

— can undertaking he preferred to leave to others, — his 
object was not merely to supply an exhaustive work of 
reference, but so to arrange the letters and journals, the 
confessions and experiences, of one who has been so often 
styled the founder and father of New England, that the 
story of his career should be substantially told in his 
own words. 

I do not forget [wrote Mr. Winthrop in his introduction] 
the caution suggested in the old couplet of the author of the 
' Night Thoughts,' — 

' They that on glorious ancestors enlarge 
Produce their debt, instead of their discharge.' 

I hardly know, however, of a deeper debt which any one 
can incur, or of a more binding obligation which any one can 
discharge, — whenever circumstances may afford the means 
and opportunity of doing so, — than to bring out from the 
treasures of the past, and to hold up to the view of the present 
and coming generations, a great example of private virtue and 
public usefulness ; of moderation in counsel and energy in 
action ; of stern self-denial and unsparing self-devotion ; of 
childlike trust in God, and implicit faith in the gospel of 
Christ, united with courage enough for conducting a colony 
across the ocean, and wisdom enough for building up a State 
in the wilderness. Nor could any one easily subject himself 
to a juster reproach than that of shrinking from the discharge 
of such a debt, for fear of being thought inclined to exaggerate 
the importance, or to magnify the merits of a remote ancestry. 1 

1 In days when the flame of party animosity blazed high in Massachu- 
setts, and before the two men had become good friends, our lamented asso- 
ciate, Judge Rockwood Hoar, has been known more than once to intimate 
that Mr. Winthrop was not unaddicted to an occasional habit of blowing 
a trumpet in honor of his great ancestor, at meetings of this Society or 
elsewhere. I am not prepared to affirm that there was never any founda- 
tion for such a charge, but the thing was done, if done at all, uncon- 
sciously and in good faith. The truth is that the Governor was precisely 






232 A MEMOIR .OF 

Mure than two centuries have now passed away since the 
elder Winthrop was laid in his narrow tomb. Six genera- 
tions of descendants have intervened between him and myself. 
At such a distance of time, I trust my sincerity will not be 
questioned when I say, with another and older poet, — 

' Et genus et proavos, et quae 11011 fecimus ipsi, 
Vix ea nostra voce' 

The uncertain state of his health decided him to pub- 
lish the first volume by itself, without waiting to finish 
the second, which appeared two years later. The recep- 
tion of both by the press, and by that portion of the 
reading public interested in early New England history, 
was eminently gratifying, and not the less so because 
some of the longest and most appreciative notices of the 
book were written by total strangers to him, one, in par- 
ticular, in " Blackwood's Magazine" for August, 1867. 1 

[April 30, 1864.] I sent you my Shaksperiano,, hastily got 
up for the Annual Meeting of our Historical Society. It has 
a fact or two of which, though I ventured to tell my confreres 
4 we do not forget,' I have no idea that any of them knew 
before I told them. The disasters of the spring campaign 
thus far are depressing. Congress, too, exhibits lamentable 
indecency and rowdyism. Lincoln's letter to the Kentucky 
men is among his best efforts. Why is he not willing to let 

the sort of public character Mr. Winthrop would have warmly admired, 
even if he had been in no way related to him ; for he was not only all 
that he is described to have been, in the above paragraph, but he had. 
like his descendant, a marked distaste for rampant and windy enthusiasts 
of both sexes, coupled with a firm persuasion that, in a community, '• the 
best part is always the least, and of that best part the wiser is always the 
lesser." 

1 Among other reviews of it, those which appeared in the " North 
American Review" for January, 1804, and January, 1867; the "Atlantic 
Monthly " for January, 186 1 ; the " Christian Examiner " for March, 1864 ; 
and the "Princeton Review " for April, 1864, are worthy of mention. 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 233 

Grant employ McClellan ? It would do much to reinstate 
public confidence. By the way, I met McDowell at dinner 
here some little time ago, and was agreeably surprised to find 
him one of the most modest, intelligent, and agreeable officers 
whose acquaintance I had made during the war. I was a 
guest last week at a banquet of the Saturday Club, where I 
sat between Longfellow and Holmes. Agassiz presided, 
and called me out after Emerson and Richard Grant White. 
I spoke some ten minutes. So did Governor Andrew, Free- 
man Clarke, and others, while Holmes read a spirited poem. 
But the occasion was more in your line than mine ; the older 
I grow the less I care for such things, though they are some- 
times unavoidable. 

In the course of a short address, entitled More 
Tracts for the Camp, delivered at the anniversary of 
the American Tract Society in Boston, May 24, 1864, 
he took occasion to say : — 

Never, certainly, was there greater need than now of earnest 
and united efforts, among Christians of all sections and of all 
sects, to stay the flood of vice and crime, of immorality and 
irreligion, which is sweeping so wildly over our land. I would 
not exaggerate the pernicious effects of this deplorable civil 
war upon public and private morality. Doubtless there have 
been developments of courage and patriotism, of benevolence 
and munificence, of self-denial and self-sacrifice, among the 
men and among the women of our land, during the last two 
or three years, which are worthy of all admiration, and which 
furnish no small set-off to the balance of evil on the other 
side of the account. But no one can be unconscious of the 
fearful influences of times like the present, in enfeebling and 
almost extinguishing that sense of individual responsibility, 
moral and religious, which is the great safeguard of social 
virtue. No one can be blind to the reckless extravagance, 
the dishonest contracts, the gambling speculations, the cor- 



234 A MEMOIR OF 

rupting luxury, the intemperance, profligacy, and crime, which 
have followed with still accelerating steps in the train of the 
terrible struggle with which we are engaged. No one can 
fail to perceive the danger that a real or even a professed 
patriotism may be made the cover for a multitude of sins, and 
gallantly on the field of battle be regarded as a substitute for 
all the duties of the decalogue. . . . The camps of our armies 
are anions the choicest fields for labors like those in which this 
Society is engaged. There is a yearning and a craving, we 
are told by our agents, for the word of life, among those to 
whom the prospect of death is so immediately present as it is 
to soldiers on the perilous edge of battle. There is a hunger 
and thirst after tidings of a better world among those who 
feel how soon they may be summoned away from this world. 
And woe to us all, if we fail to meet the full demand for 
these moral and religious supplies ! Woe to our country, 
if it fails to cherish and sustain this and other kindred socie- 
ties which make up together the great Christian Commissariat 
of the War ! 

[Sept. 1, 1864.] I am pleased to know you liked my tribute 
to President Quincy, with which I took some pains. Since 
then I have passed a pleasant week at Newport with Holmes 
for fellow-boarder. Your wife would not let you live in the 
house a day with him if she were to hear him talk about reli- 
gion ; but my creed is proof against his rationalistic theories. 
Meantime his patriotism and loyalty are up to fever heat, 
while I content myself with keeping true to the good old 
Constitutional range between '70 and '89. I greatly fear that 
you and I are going to differ about the Presidential question, 
and that it is too late for you to talk me over. It really seems 
to me as if the best hope of restoring the Union was in a 
change of administration, and I feel irresistibly compelled to 
support McClellan, though the advertisement of my name 
as intending to speak at the meeting in New York last month 
was without my knowledge or consent. I shall not improbably 
have something to say later, if my health admits. 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 235 

[Sept. 10.] The news from Atlanta ought to have made us 
all young again. Sherman is a grand fellow. All his strategy 
is of the highest order, and his letter about our Massachusetts 
recruiting system a choice utterance. We shall have him 
in the White House one of these days, but it is too late now. 
I admit that the Chicago platform does not suit my fancy, 
and that George Pendleton is hardly my beau ideal for Vice- 
President ; but, on the whole, I do not see my way clear to 
prefer Lincoln and Johnson to McClellan and Pendleton. 
The former's letter of acceptance is admirable, and I can 
say Amen to it. 

Mr. Winthrop's acquaintance with General McClellan 
had been only of a few years' duration ; but during that 
time he had formed a very high opinion of him, the 
result both of personal intercourse and correspondence 
upon public affairs, considering him a brave, prudent, 
thoroughly patriotic man, a stranger to political manage- 
ment and political intrigue, but possessing a degree of 
personal magnetism invaluable alike to a great com- 
mander and to a Presidential candidate. He recognized, 
however, that President Lincoln was the abler and 
shrewder man of the two, and one whose natural lean- 
ings were quite as conservative ; but it seemed to him 
that the latter had been led by political exigencies and 
party trammels into an objectionable policy, which had 
perverted the original object of the war and threatened 
to prolong its duration. He had opposed the latter's 
original candidacy because he feared that his election 
would be the signal for one of the bloodiest struggles of 
modern times, and in this the event proved him right. 
He now opposed the latter's second candidacy because 
he believed that another President and a different policy 
would bring that struggle to an earlier termination, and 



V 



1 



236 A MEMOIR OF 

in this the event proved him wrong. Like man) 7 other 
loyal public men of the North, some of them personal 
friends with whom he had consulted, he was under 
the impression that the Southern Confederacy had it 
in their power to protract hostilities for several years. 
Could he have foreseen that this Confederacy would 
collapse within nine months, or had the Chicago Con- 
vention seen fit to nominate an out-and-out Democrat, 
he might have felt differently. As matters stood, and 
after the most careful consideration he could reach, 
his course seemed clear, and he had no hesitation in 
declaring himself. On the 17th of September, 18G4, 
he was one of the prominent speakers at the great 
open-air meeting in New York to ratify McClellan's 
nomination, — the largest political gathering he had 
ever attended, and stated to have been the largest ever 
assembled, up to that time, in this country. The state 
of his health obliged him to decline many similar invi- 
tations, but a month later (Oct. 18, 1861) he made a 
long and elaborate speech, intended for circulation as a 
campaign document, at a great open-air meeting at 
New London, choosing this locality because it was one 
with which he had family associations, and because 
Connecticut was considered one of the doubtful States. 
On the 2d of November, too, he made a shorter speech 
in the Boston Music Hall, at a so-called campfire of the 
McClellan Legion. These three speeches together cover 
no less than fifty pages of close type, and, though they 
necessarily include a certain amount of repetition, they 
cannot be fully described in a memoir like this, but I 
quote from them at some length in order to clearly 
define his position and exhibit the general tone of his 
argument : — 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 237 

The candidate whom we support is eminently a young man's 
candidate, — the youngest in years, I believe, that was ever 
nominated for the Presidency ; but who has won laurels 
in the field, and shown a discretion and a wisdom in civil 
affairs winch would have done honor to the oldest. It might 
well be the pride of the young men of America not only to 
see that he has fair play and a generous support, but to secure 
him an opportunity of showing what young men can do, and 
are destined to do, in the high places of the land, as well as 
on the field of battle. The question before us, however, is 
not about candidates, but about our country ; not about the 
relative claims or merits of Abraham Lincoln and George B. 
McClellan, but about the nation's welfare and the nation's 
life. In whose hands will that precious life be safest ? That 
is the question ; and I do not forget that it is a question of 
opinion, on which every man has a right to form, and every 
man has a right to follow, his own opinion. Nothing could be 
further from my purpose than to cast the slightest imputation 
upon the patriotism of Abraham Lincoln, or anybody else. 
Those who are of opinion that he is just about to succeed in 
bringing the war to a successful termination are right to give 
him their support. We would all support him if we were of 
this opinion, for we want the country saved, no matter who 
is to have the glory. I can only say that in my humble judg- 
ment, the policy of his administration, as gradually developed, 
has been a policy calculated to divide and weaken the coun- 
sels of the North, and to unite and concentrate the energies of 
the South, — a policy in which the all-important end of re-estab- 
lishing the Union is now almost shut out of sight, so mixed up 
and complicated has it been with schemes of philanthropy on 
the one side, and with schemes of confiscation, subjugation, and 
extermination on the other. Instead of the one great constitu- 
tional idea of restoration, we have been treated to all manner 
of projects and theories of reconstruction. At one time we 
have had solemn propositions for annihilating whole States, 
whole systems of States, and blotting out their stars from 



V- 



238 A MEMOIR OF 

our national banner. At another we have heard open declara- 
tions that we were never again to be permitted to have ' the 
Constitution as it is, and the Union as it was.' Good heavens, 
what else are we fighting for? What other Union are we 
striving to establish ? What other Constitution are our rulers 
and legislators solemnly sworn to support ? . . . 

We all know that it was the success of the Republican 
party, with its sectional organization and its alleged sectional 
objects, which furnished the original occasion, four years ago, 
for that ungodly and atrocious assault upon our Government 
which inaugurated this gigantic civil war. We all know that 
the secession leaders of the South, who had so long been 
meditating the movement in vain, exulted in the election of 
Abraham Lincoln at that day, — as I fully believe they will 
exult again, if he is rechosen in November, — because it 
supplied the very fuel which was needed for this awful 
conflagration. That assault upon the Government can never 
be characterized in terms of too severe condemnation; and 
if railing at the rebellion or its authors would do any good 
this evening, — if it would be anything better than baying at 
yonder moon, — I would join with you in denouncing it 
until the vocabulary of condemnation was exhausted. But 
we all know that the whole North rose nobly up, as one 
man, without distinction of party, to repel that assault ; and 
that they have sustained the Government — Democrats, 
Republicans, and Conservatives alike — with all their hearts 
and hands, pouring out their blood and money like water 
from that day to this. And the loyal States will continue 
to sustain the ' powers that be ' in all their constitutional 
action until the end of their term, whatever may be the 
result of the pending election. But no considerations of 
loyalty or patriotism call upon us to unite in prolonging the 
supremacy of a party whose art and part it has so eminently 
been to extinguish almost eveiy spark of Union sentiment in 
Southern breasts, and to implant in them a spirit of despera- 
tion and hatred which has rendered the victories of our armies 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 239 

harder to achieve, and has robbed them of so many of their 
legitimate results after they have been achieved. . . . We 
need a change of counsels. We need a change of counsellors. 
We need to go back to the principles embodied in the resolu- 
tion adopted by Congress, not far from the fourth day of 
July, 1861, and worthy to have been adopted on that hallowed 
anniversary itself, — adopted in the Senate on the motion of 
Andrew Johnson, and in the House on the motion of the 
lamented Crittenden. That resolution embodied the simple 
policy of a vigorous prosecution of the war for no purpose of 
subjugation or aggression, in no spirit of revenge or hatred, 
with no disposition to destroy or impair the constitutional 
rights of any State or section, but for the sole end of vindi- 
cating the Constitution and re-establishing the Union. Such a 
policy has been enforced and illustrated by General McClellan 
in his memorable despatch from Harrison's Landing, in his 
brilliant oration at West Point, and in his admirable letter 
accepting the nomination, which alone constitutes a platform 
broad enough and comprehensive enough for every patriot in 
the land to stand upon. It has the clarion ring to rally a 
nation to the rescue. It speaks, too, in trumpet tones to our 
deluded brethren in rebellion, warning them that there is to 
be no cessation of hostilities upon any other basis than that of 
Union, but proclaiming to them that the door of reconciliation 
and peace is open on their resuming their allegiance to the Con- 
stitution and the laws. That letter of acceptance has turned 
the flank of his revilers, and has taken away every pretext 
for those indecent and unjust insinuations against opponents 
of the Administration, which have fallen from so many 
ruthless partisan pens, and from so many reckless partisan 
tongues. The air is full of them. Arbitrary and arrogant 
assumptions of superior patriotism and loyalty; coarse and 
malicious misrepresentations and imputations ; opprobrious 
and insulting names and epithets, — they come swarming up 
from stump and rostrum and press and platform. We meet 
them at every turn. Let us not retort them or resent them. 



240 A MEMOIR OF 

Let us imitate the example of our candidate, whose quiet 
endurance of injustice and calumny has been one of the 
most beautiful illustrations of his character. Let us pass 
on, unawed and unintimidated, to the declaration of our 
own honest opinions, and to the assertion and exercise of 
our risfhts as freemen. With such an issue as national life 
or national death before us, there ought to be no hesitation. 
Every one of us, young and old, is called upon by considera- 
tions from which there can be no appeal, by obligations from 
which there can be no escape, to form a careful, dispassionate, 
conscientious opinion as to his own individual duty, and then 
to perform that duty without flinching or faltering. We may 
be pardoned for an honest mistake. We may be excused for an 
error of judgment. But we can never be excused, before men 
or before God, for standing neutral and doing nothing. . . . 

I was greatly struck by an account of an interview which 
certain very earnest antislavery gentlemen held with the 
President, not a great while ago, on the subject of substi- 
tuting General Fremont for my old friend Edward Stanly as 
Provisional Governor of North Carolina. President Lincoln 
is represented to have replied, ' Gentlemen, it is generally the 
case that a man who begins a work is not the best man to carry 
it on to a successful termination. I believe it was so in the 
case of Moses, was it not? He got the children of Israel out of 
Egypt, but the Lord selected some one else to bring them to 
their journey's end. A pioneer has hard work to do, and 
generally gets so battered and spattered that people prefer 
another, even though they may accept the principle.' It would 
seem that nothing was said at this interview about the 'danger 
of swapping horses in crossing a stream.' On the contrary, 
the President emphatically appealed to that memorable prece- 
dent in Holy Writ when the children of Israel, being them- 
selves about to cross a stream, were compelled to follow a new 
leader in order to get safely over. We all know that they 
could never have crossed the Jordan and entered into the 
promised land, had they refused to accept Joshua as their 



ROBERT C. WLNTHROP. 241 

leader, and some of us are not a little afraid that the same 
fatality which attended the ancient Moses is about to find a 
fresh illustration in the case of our modern Abraham. I am not 
here, as I have said before, to indulge in any personal imputa- 
tion upon President Lincoln ; and let me say, in passing, that 
lie has received harder blows from some of his own followers — 
from Senator Wade, Winter Davis, General Fremont, and 
others who have been less open but not less violent in their 
denunciations of him — than he has from any of his opponents. 1 
But I cannot help remarking that, in my humble opinion, he 
would have adopted a course worthy of all commendation if, 
instead of talking about swapping horses in crossing a stream, 
he could have been induced to say, six months ago, to the peo- 
ple of the United States something of tins sort : ' You elected 
me fairly your President, and the President of the whole Union, 
four years ago. . I have done my best to vindicate my title to 
the trust you conferred. The loyal States have nobly sup- 
ported me. You have given me all the men and all the money 
I have asked for. You have borne and forborne with me in 
many changes of policy, and in all the assertions of arbitrary 
power to which I have thought it necessary to resort. I shall 
go on to the best of my ability to the end of my allotted term ; 
but I am then ready to return to the ranks. No pride of 

1 An interesting assemblage of documents relating to this Presidential 
campaign was furnished by Mr. Charles A. Dana to the New York " Sun " 
of June 30, 1889. It appears that on the 18th of August, 1864, Horace 
Greeley wrote : " Mr. Lincoln is already beaten. He cannot be elected. 
If we had such a ticket as Grant, Butler, or Sherman for President, and 
Farragut for Vice, we could make a fight yet, and such a ticket we ought 
to have." On the 29th of August, 1864, John Jay wrote from Newport, 
advising that Mr. Lincoln should be asked to retire from the candidacy 
and suggesting that "such a letter might be prepared as would compel his 
[Lincoln's] acquiescence." On the 1st of September, 1864, Charles Sumner 
wrote : " It may be that Mr. Lincoln will see that we shall all be stronger 
and more united under another candidate. But if he does not see it so, 
our duty is none the less clear." On the following day, Sept. 2, 1864, 
Whitelaw Reid wrote to express similar views, and adding : " We think 
McClellan and Pendleton a very strong ticket, and fear the result." 

16 



242 A MEMOIR OF 

place, no loss of patronage or power, shall induce me to stand 
in your way for a moment in your great struggle to restore 
the Union of our fathers. I do not forget how much of per- 
sonal prejudice and part}- jealousy was arrayed against me at 
the outset. I do not forget how deeply political and sectional 
antagonisms entered into the causes of this rebellion. I am 
not insensible that the policy I have recently felt constrained 
to adopt has increased and aggravated those prejudices and 
those antagonisms. Select a new candidate. Choose a new 
President, against whom, and against whose friends, there 
will be less of preconceived hostility and hate ; and may God 
give him wisdom and courage to save the country and restore 
the Union ! ' What a glorious example of patriotic self-denial 
and magnanimity this would have been ! Who would not have 
envied President Lincoln the opportunity of exhibiting it? 
I am by no means sure it would not have re-elected him Presi- 
dent in spite of himself. But he has thought fit to adopt the 
very reverse of this magnanimous and self-denying policy. He 
has quite forgotten that one-term principle to which he and I 
were committed as members of the old Whig party. We see 
him clinging eagerly to patronage and place. We see him 
demanding to be renominated, demanding to be re-elected, 
and claiming it almost as a test of patriotism and loyalty that 
we should all with one accord support him for four years more. 
We hear his Secretary of State comparing a vote against 
Abraham Lincoln to giving aid and comfort to the rebels, and 
even indulging in what is well called a portentous threat, that 
if the people shall dare to choose a new President, the Govern- 
ment will be abdicated, and let fall to pieces by itself, between 
the election and the inauguration. An absurd assumption, 
that a support of a government must necessarily involve a 
support of the policy of an existing administration, — this 
absurd and preposterous assumption, which has been put for- 
ward so arrogantly within the last year or two, is now pushed 
on to the monstrous length of maintaining that patriotism 
demands the re-election of an existing President in time of 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 243 

war, even though a majority of the people may have no confi- 
dence in the capacity of the incumbent, either for conducting 
the war or for negotiating a peace. No changing Presidents 
in the hour of danger or struggle, is the cry. No swapping 
horses in crossing a stream. Everything else may be changed 
or swapped. You may change commanders-in-chief in the very 
face of the enemy ; you may remove a gallant leader, as you 
did General McClellan, when he had just achieved one glori- 
ous victory, and was on his way to the almost certain achieve- 
ment of another ; you may swap Secretaries of War, as you 
did Cameron for Stanton ; you may swap Secretaries of the 
Treasury, as you did Chase for Fessenden; you may swap 
Postmasters-General, as you have just done Blair for Denni- 
son ; you may change your candidates for the Vice-Presidency 
' handy-dandy,' and leave Mr. Hannibal Hamlin to shoulder 
his musket in a Bangor militia company. Thus far you may 
go, but no further. You must not touch me. You must not 
change Presidents. Patriotism requires that Abraham Lincoln 
shall be exempt from all such casualties. And so we are all to 
be drummed into voting for him under a threat of the pains and 
penalties of treason. This extraordinary doctrine is getting 
to be a little contagious, and from some recent manifestations 
in my own part of the country I should suppose it was fast 
becoming a cherished dogma among office-holders of all grades, 
both national and State, that the only true patriotism con- 
sisted in keeping them all snugly in place, and that a failure 
to vote for any or all of them was little better than disloyalty 
to the Government. It is certainly very accommodating in 
our Presidents, and Governors, and Senators, and Representa- 
tives thus to save the people the trouble of an election. If the 
war lasts four years more, we may be spared the trouble of 
elections altogether. My friends, if the people are wise, they 
will give some of their public servants a lesson on this subject 
before it is too late, and teach them that the freedom of elec- 
tions is too precious a privilege to be abandoned at the dicta- 
tion of those who have already enjoyed a greater length of 



2U A MEMOIR OF 

service, as some of us think, than is altogether consistent with 
the public welfare and the public safety. The progress of 
this terrible war is leaving its mark on not a few of our most 
cherished privileges as free men. An overshadowing doctrine 
of necessity has obliterated not a few of the old constitutional 
limitations and landmarks of authority. An armed preroga- 
tive has gradually lifted itself to an appalling height through- 
out the land. But, thank Heaven, it is still in the power of 
the people to assert their right to a fair and free election of 
their rulers. And if they shall do so successfully, — what- 
ever may be the result, — no nobler spectacle will have been 
witnessed in this land since it first asserted its title to be called 
a land of liberty. Let it be seen that the American people 
can go through a Presidential election freely and fairly, even 
durinsr the rasing storm of civil war, and our institutions will 
have had a glorious triumph, whatever party or whatever 
candidate may suffer a defeat. 

. . . And here let me say that in this eager and desperate 
determination of the President and his party to prolong their 
official supremacy at all hazards, and even by the most un- 
blushing exercise of all the patronage and power and influ- 
ence of the Government on their own behalf, I find renewed 
reason for fearing that they cannot safely be trusted for an 
early restoration of ' the Union as it was, under the Constitu- 
tion as it is.' No one can help seeing that it is by no means 
for their interest, as a party, to accomplish that result. They 
remember that, after the election of President Lincoln, they 
would have been in a minority in one, if not in both branches 
of Congress, had not Southern Senators and Representatives 
so rashly and wantonly withdrawn from their seats ; and 
they see plainly that the return of the South to the family fold 
under the old Constitution forebodes the end and upshot of 
their dynasty. How, then, can we help fearing that they will 
willingly, if not systematically, postpone a result which is so 
likely to cut them off from any further enjoyment of power? 
The truth is, that the Republican party have so thriven and 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 245 

fattened on this rebellion, and it has brought them such an 
overflowing harvest of power, patronage, offices, contracts, 
and spoils, and they have become so enamoured of the vast 
and overshadowing influence which belongs to an existing 
administration at such an hour, that they are in danger of 
forgetting that their country is bleeding and dying on their 
hands. It was in the power of that party, by giving counte- 
nance and encouragement to the Peace Convention of Febru- 
ary, 1861, and to the measures it proposed, to confine secession 
to South Carolina and the Gulf States, to nip rebellion in 
the bud, and to restore peace within six months. Instead of 
which, the ultra wing of that party stood idly by, mocking at 
every effort to prevent and avert this great and terrible strug- 
gle, and rejoicing at the prospect of a clearer field for the 
more successful prosecution of their own fanatical views, and 
for the more undisputed establishment of their own party 
supremacy. Is it to be imagined that such men will be ready 
or willing to co-operate in bringing back Southern States to 
their old rights under the Constitution ? Or is it proposed to 
bring them back as desolate and subjugated provinces, to be 
held in subjection by standing armies ? Are we deliberately 
bent on having an American Poland on this continent? Are 
all our efforts for the abolition of black slavery to end in estab- 
lishing a quasi-condition of white slavery? Is that what we 
are fighting for under the old Liberty flag of our fathers ? . . . 
We all know that the Administration has solemnly adopted 
the policy of complete emancipation as a necessary result of 
the rebellion and the war. We all know that, after having 
rallied the country for two years on the plain, direct, con- 
stitutional issue of enforcing the laws and restoring the Union, 
the President suddenly changed his hand, and, in the teeth 
of all his own declarations and arguments, put forth a solemn 
proclamation of universal emancipation. We all know that, 
at this moment, no man in the rebel States is allowed to 
return to his allegiance and resume his place as a loyal citizen, 
without swearing to support this proclamation, and that the 



24 G A MEMOIR OF 

President has recently issued a formal manifesto, making 
abandonment of slavery a condition precedent for even the 
reception of any proposals for peace. Meantime Mr. Secretary 
Seward, for whom I have nothing but the kindest feelings, 
has expressly admitted, in his recent speech at Auburn, that 
there are those of the Republican party ' who want guarantees 
of swift and universal and complete emancipation, or they do 
not want the nation saved.' Is there not too much reason to 
apprehend that this class of men is more numerous than even 
Mr. Seward imagines, and that in the next four years they will 
have acquired — if they have not already acquired — a pre- 
vailing and paramount influence over the Administration ? 
Mark the words : ' Men who want guarantees for swift, and 
universal, and complete emancipation, or they do not want 
the nation saved.' And this, I suppose, is what these men 
would call unconditional Unionism ! And what have we 
heard of late from distinguished Republicans holding high 
oflicial positions in my own Commonwealth of Massachusetts? 
I will not name them, to avoid personality, but I will give their 
precise language. From one we have the declaration that 
' the appeal from sire to son should go on forever and forever 
until the last acre of Southern land, baptized by Massachusetts 
blood, should be rescued from the infidels to liberty.' From 
another equally distinguished Republican we have the even 
more distinct declaration that 'the Baltimore Convention 
and Abraham Lincoln ask something more than the Union as 
the condition of peace ; ' while from the same eminent source 
we are assured that a vote for Abraham Lincoln is to usher in 
the glorious day when the eloquence of Wendell Phillips 
may be enjoyed at Richmond and Charleston, as it is now 
enjoyed at New York and Boston. I may be told that this 
is only the rant and rhapsody of fanatical rhetoricians, but I 
cannot so regard it. What said the resolutions adopted at the 
same meeting ? One of them concluded by the unequivocal 
announcement that ' the war must go on until the pride of 
the [Southern] leaders is humbled, their power broken, and 



ROBERT C. WIXTHROP. 247 

the civil and social structure of the South reorganized on the 
basis of free labor, free speech, and equal rights for all before 
the law.' There can be no misunderstand in sr the iniDort of 
this language. It is clear, explicit, unequivocal. It does not 
pretend that the war is to be prosecuted for the restoration of 
the Union, but it expressly declares that it is not to be per- 
mitted to cease until the social structure of the South is 
reorganized, and from this declaration we may form, I think, 
a pretty distinct idea of the prospect before us if the Repub- 
lican party remains in power. . . . 

There is not a man in the loyal States who would not 
rejoice with all his heart and soul if African slavery could 
be safely and legitimately brought to an end on this whole 
continent ; but I, for one, have never had a particle of faith 
that a sudden, sweeping, forcible emancipation could result 
in anything but mischief and misery for the black race, as 
well as the white. The proclamation, however, has been 
issued long ago, and its efficacy and its authority are to 
be the subjects of future experience and future adjudica- 
tion. It was undoubtedly one of the greatest stretches of 
the doctrine of necessity — it was unquestionably one of the 
most startling exercises of the one-man power — which the 
history of human government, free or despotic, has ever 
witnessed. I have no disposition to question its wisdom 
or its authority as a measure adopted for securing greater 
success to our arms and an earlier termination of the war, 
— though I cannot help entertaining grave doubts on both 
points. But the idea that it is now to be made the pre- 
text for prolonging that war, after the original and only 
legitimate end for which it was undertaken shall have been 
accomplished ; the idea that we are to go on fighting and 
fighting for ' something more than the Union ; ' the idea 
that the war is not to be permitted to cease until the whole 
social structure of the South has been reorganized, — is one 
abhorrent to every instinct of my soul, to every dictate 
of my judgment, to every principle which I cherish as a 



248 A MEMOIR OF 

statesman and a Christian. It is a policy, too, in my opinion, 
utterly unconstitutional, and as much in the spirit of rebel- 
lion as almost anything which has been attempted by the 
Southern States. ... A solemn oath to support the Constitu- 
tion of the United States, as it is, still rests upon all our rulers, 
and a solemn obligation upon our whole people. We must 
pursue constitutional ends by constitutional means. What a 
triumph it would be if this Constitution of our fathers should 
come out, after all, unscathed from this fiery trial ; if it should 
be seen to have prevailed, by its own innate original force and 
vigor, over all the machinations and assaults of its enemies ! 
How proudl} 7 , then, might we hold it up before all mankind, 
in all time to come, as we have in all time past, as indeed the 
masterpiece of political and civil wisdom ! How confidently 
could we then challenge all the world to show us a system of 
government of equal stability and endurance ! It has already 
stood the strain of prosperity and of adversity. Foreign wars 
and domestic dissensions have hitherto assailed it in vain. 
The rains have descended, and the winds have blown, and 
the floods have come and beaten upon it, but it has not been 
shaken. The great final test is now upon it, — rebellion, revo- 
lution, civil war, in their most formidable and appalling shape. 
Oh, if we can but carry it through this last trial unharmed, 
we never again need fear for its security. Let us then hold 
it up — the Constitution, the whole Constitution, and nothing 
but the Constitution — as at once the end and the instrument 
of all our efforts. Let us demand a faithful adherence to all 
its forms and to all its principles. Let us watch jealously for 
the observance and fulfilment of all its provisions. And let 
us resolve that if it does fail and fall at last, it shall be by the 
madness of its enemies, and not by the supineness or willing 
surrender of its friends ! 

The active support given by Mr. Winthrop to the 
candidacy of General McClellan was criticised with 
much asperity by the Republican press. It was an 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 249 

amusement of his to preserve newspaper-cuttings relat- 
ing to himself — whether complimentary or the reverse 

— so far as they came to his notice, and particularly 
when he knew, or thought he knew, the names of the 
writers. It has occurred to me to reproduce two such 
articles, which I find on opposite pages of the same 
scrap-book, — one associated with the name of James 
C. Welling, then editor of the " National Intelligencer," 
afterward President of Columbian College, "Washington ; 
the other with the name of a gentleman then con- 
nected with a leading Boston newspaper, for many 
years an officer of a distinguished university, and long 
one of our resident-members. As his engagements do 
not appear to have thus far enabled him to contribute 
to our publications, my reprint will serve a double pur- 
pose, the article being a well-written one, conceived, 
apparently, more in sorrow than in anger, and undoubt- 
edly reflecting at that time — perhaps still reflecting 

— the opinions of many intelligent and thoughtful 
persons. 

[The "Daily Advertiser," Sept. 21, 1864.] 

" Mr. Winthrop found himself in rather unusual company 
at the democratic ratification meeting in New York, on Sat- 
urday evening. At the stand from which he addressed his 
new associates, the meeting was called to order by Elijah F. 
Purdy, ' Grand Sachem ' of the Tammany Club. At a neigh- 
boring stand Mr. Fernando Wood — a name redolent of any- 
thing but a savor of respectability and patriotism — was 
giving in his adhesion at the same time with Mr. Winthrop. 
At another, Mr. Oakey Hall was nominating James Gordon 
Bennett for Congress. And at a third the notorious Isaiah 
Rynders was venting his strenuous eloquence in a style 



250 A MEMOIR OF 

which has lost none of its repulsive characteristics. It was a 
strange company for Mr. Winthrop, of all men, to be found 
in. There could have been little in it to remind him pleas- 
antly of his former political life. Even the superlative satis- 
faction of being accompanied by a gentleman (a rare sight then 
and there) ' whom he had known for so many years as the 
tried and trusty friend of Daniel Webster,' 1 great as that 
charm must be supposed to have been to Mr. Winthrop, could 
hardly have compensated him for an association so repugnant 
to every old memory and eveiy personal trait of his own, and 
so little likely, we must add, to conduce to Mr. Winthrop's 
own fame. 

"Mr. Winthrop has had his opportunities to establish 
himself in the goodwill, the confidence, and esteem of his 
fellow-citizens such as few men have enjoyed. He is one of 
those men who seem born to be public favorites. There is 
hardly any station in the gift of our people which did not 
once seem to be within his reach. To not a few stations of 
high dignity he has actually been called, — not, we will 
remark, by the suffrages or with the goodwill of those with 
whom he now consorts. We will not undertake now to discuss 
the reasons for that gradual and not quite voluntary with- 
drawal from public affairs, which for some years back has left 
Mr. Winthrop outside of the current. There may have been 
grievances on his part as well as mistakes. He may have 
found it difficult to accustom himself to the political com- 
panionship and to the claims for precedence of men whom he 
had not been used to regard as his worthy associates, but 
whom the vicissitudes of politics had made even more con- 
spicuous than himself for the time, although perhaps less fully 
prepared for the long race of public life. We cannot con- 
ceive that any association thus brought about by the change 
of times and of issues can have been more distasteful than 
that which Mr. Winthrop has now formed ; but still these 
considerations, and such as these, may have served to put him 

1 Hon. Hiram Ketchum. 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 251 

in a position where his abilities and acquirements were lost to 
the public service, almost as much to the regret of many of 
his fellow-citizens as to his own. 

The time came, however, when Mr. Winthrop could easily 
escape from this false position, — an hour when men of all 
parties were ready to bury the past and to remember nothing 
but present devotion to a country in peril. At the breaking 
out of the war many a record, with blots far worse than any 
upon Mr. Wmthrop's, was closed and a fair page opened on 
which a new account could be entered. There is no difficulty 
in recalling names then in as false a position before the public 
as Mr. Wmthrop's, but now distinguished by the public grati- 
tude for services promptly and heartily rendered in the hour 
of danger. That opportunity, frankly improved according to 
the dictates, we will not say of interest and personal ambi- 
tion, but of a generous patriotism, would have given Mr. 
Winthrop a foremost place in the regards of our people. The 
popular judgment asked only for evidence that a ready in- 
stinct impelled the statesman, even though retired, to spring 
to the defence of a country assailed by treason. If he forgot 
the past and remembered only his country, the people of all 
parties were ready to do the same, and to recognize gener- 
ously all worthy service. 

" It has been Mr. Winthrop's misfortune, or else his mis- 
take, that he has never seemed responsive to this state of 
public feeling. His occasional but not frequent appearances 
in public have failed to establish a sympathy between himself 
and his fellow-citizens, with respect to the subject which lay 
nearest to their hearts. His utterances, if they have not been 
cold, have failed to convey the impression of any spontaneous 
and hearty zeal, and thus the barrier between him and the 
public, so far from being broken down, as it easily might 
have been, has been strengthened. It will not be overcome 
by the desperate leap which Mr. Winthrop has now made. 
Neither is the past to be retrieved, nor the future secured, 
nor any public service done, by the devotion of his efforts at 



252 A MEMOIR OF 

this hour to the advancement of a candidate on the Chicago 
platform. It is bootless for Mr. Winthrop to sneer at that 
document as a ' paper pellet of the brain, concocted in a mid- 
night session of a resolution-committee during the hurly- 
burly of a Presidential nomination.' The country does not 
so regard it. The country takes the platform for what it is, 

— the solemnly declared policy of a great party, which as- 
pires to the government of the nation. The country will not 
forget the choice that is now made by any public man. A 
mistake now, a neglect of this opportunity to set himself right 
upon the record, will be an error not to be retrieved. 

" Mr. Winthrop is not alone in his failure to improve this 
final occasion for repairing past errors. There are other men 

— between whom and the public there has been a difference 
as to their deserts, and who have been struggling to extricate 
themselves from unfortunate entanglements or the conse- 
quences of old mistakes — who are now taking the final 
plunge. When the sun goes down on the 8th of November, 
the political waters will close finally over a good many ships 
which once put forth brave and trim, but were not staunch 
enough for the storms of these later years." 



[The " National Intelligencer," Sept. 24, 1864.] 

" The Boston ' Dail}>- Advertiser,' apparently smarting under 
a sense of shame at its present political association with black 
spirits and white, — as the Daniel S. Dickinsons, Benjamin 
F. Butlers, and John W. Forneys, on the one hand, and the 
William Lloyd Garrisons, Frederick Douglasses, and Lucretia 
Motts, on the other, — has betaken itself, under the stress of 
an imagined fellow-feeling that makes it very kind, to com- 
miserate the Hon. Robert C. Winthrop on his present co- 
operation with the Democratic party, and thinks that Mr. 
Winthrop must have found himself ' in rather unusual com- 
pany ' at the immense meeting held in New York to ratify 
General McClellan's nomination. As it is estimated that 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 253 

nearly one hundred thousand persons participated in that 
great popular demonstration, we think it quite possible 
that there may be some room for the profound observation of 
the ' Advertiser.' We have no doubt that in such a crowd 
many persons could be found who would be antipathetic to a 
gentleman of Mr. Winthrop's scholarly tastes and political 
antecedents. But we have just as little doubt that in an assem- 
blage which comprised among its officers such men as William 
B. Astor, James Gallatin, James T. Brady, and hosts of 
others, it would be quite possible to find other persons, who, 
by whatever test their ' respectability ' may be tried (even as 
respectability is measured in Boston), would be deemed by the 
' Advertiser ' not entirely unworthy of political or social 
fellowship. But on this point we express an opinion with 
great diffidence. . . . 

" In reply to the lament the ' Advertiser ' utters over Mr. 
Winthrop, if there is anybody in or out of Boston who, when- 
ever he was called to say ' what he thought of the Republic,' 
has manifested a more intense or sincere sympathy than he, 
with the cause of the country 'as assailed by treason,' we 
would be grateful to the ' Advertiser ' for the indication of 
his name. We are not apprised of any such. And when our 
contemporary says that ' at the breaking out of the war many 
a record, with blots far worse than any upon Mr. Winthrop's, 
was closed and a fair page opened,' there is nobody who does 
not perceive that in so writing the ' Advertiser ' merely essays 
to cover the smutches winch cling to the past characters of 
many among its present political companions, who, after 
serving faithfully in the ranks of the ' slave Democracy ' while 
it had honors to bestow and emoluments to offer, are now the 
accepted allies of our contemporary. It may well confess, 
both on its own account and on theirs, to some sensibility at 
the ' vicissitudes of politics ' which have brought such a 
strange coalition of incongruous elements in the bosom of the 
same party ; but we think that, as well on the score of estab- 
lished patriotism as of consistent adherence to political prin- 



254 A MEMOIR OF 

ciple, Mr. Winthrop lias no indulgence to ask from any 
quarter, and least of all from the ' Daily Advertiser.' 

" On the 4th of October, 1861, the 'Advertiser' thought it 
the part of patriotism and of political principle to hold the 
following language : — 

" ' We are sorry to see a disposition in several quarters to represent the 
Republican party, mainly on the strength of Mr. Sumner's unfortunate 
speech at Worcester, as a party of emancipation, a " John Brown party," 
a party that desires to carry on this war as a war of abolition. The 
resort to such arguments and misrepresentations has a tendency to weaken 
the confidence of the people in the management of the war, to inspire 
unfounded suspicions as to the purposes for which they are asked to 
enlist and to contribute their money, and to lead them to elevate into 
undue importance the mad counsels of men like Mr. Sumner, — a ten- 
dency which we must deeply deplore, not as Republicans, but as American 
citizens, anxious for the welfare of our country. . . . We hold it for an 
incontestible truth that neither men nor money will be forthcoming for 
this war if once the people are impressed with the belief that the abolition 
of slavery and not the defence of the Union is its object, and that its 
original purpose is to be converted into a cloak for some new design of 
seizing this opportunity for the destruction of the social system of the 
South. The people are heart and soul with their Government in support 
of any constitutional undertaking ; we do not believe that they will follow 
it, if they are made to suspect that they are being decoyed into the support 
of any unconstitutional and revolutionary designs.' 

" It is possible, we submit, that, without entirely forfeiting 
the character of a patriot, Mr. Winthrop may think now as 
the ' Advertiser ' thought less than three years ago. He may 
have now, as the 'Advertiser' had in the month of October, 
1861, no taste for consorting with 'a party of emancipation,' 
a ' John Brown party,' a ' party that desires to carry on this 
war as an Abolition war.' He may think now, as the ' Adver- 
tiser' professed to think in 1861, that the counsels of Mr. 
Sumner were ' mad ; ' and now that these counsels, under 
the acknowledged leadership of that distinguished Senator, 
are paramount in the legislation and military operations of 
the country, Mr. Winthrop may deplore them, like the 
'Advertiser' in October, 1861, not as the adherent of any 
party, but ' as an American citizen, anxious for the welfare 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 255 

of our country.' It may be that Mr. Winthrop, in the ' vicis- 
situdes of politics,' has not been able, like the ' Daily Adver- 
tiser,' to accomplish the Irish feat of 'turning his back on 
himself,' and hence, to change the figure, while he sees some 
people willing to trim their sail to every breeze that blows, 
he may have been content to drop « outside of the current,' 
which, in wafting him to political promotion, he may fear, 
even as the ' Advertiser ' professed to fear, will lead to the 
wreck of the Union and the ruin of his country. As the 
'Advertiser ' is at some loss to account for the ' considerations ' 
which have seemed to put him in a position where his abilities 
and acquirements are lost to the public service, we beg to 
suggest that a sufficient explanation of the melancholy fact 
(for it is a melancholy fact) may be found in the steadfast- 
ness with which he has maintained his political principles. 
If by such constancy and fidelity he is now placed in a ' false 
position' before the public, it can only be a public winch 
counts political tergiversation among the virtues of patriotism, 
and holds apostasy to principle in higher esteem than honest 
convictions maintained at any cost. 

" If the ' Advertiser,' in its search for the ' considerations ' 
which may have induced Mr. Winthrop to stand aloof from 
the prevailing political influences in Massachusetts, and in the 
present Administration, should need further light on the sub- 
ject, it may perhaps derive additional illumination from its own 
columns. For instance, on the 7th of October, 1861, returning 
to the subject then, as now, uppermost in the thoughts of 
conservative men, it held the following language : — 

" ' The history of the antislavery movement in this country will hereafter 
rank as one of the strongest cases where human impatience and devotion 
to a Utopian idea has blinded men's eyes to the practical good which 
Providence has placed ready at hand. The insane folly of the abolition- 
ists killed out years ago the emancipation party which at one time had 
the actual control of Virginia, and promised to eradicate slavery in other 
Border States. The over-nice scruples of the same extremists some years 
later elected Mr. Polk and insured the consummation of the Texas 
scheme, which they affected to deprecate. Their follies and excesses have 



256 A MEMOIR OF 

still later furnished the Southern extremists and their allies with a whole 
arsenal of weapons, which have been turned without reason but with 
marked effect against the Republicans, the only political party which has 
pretended to recognize any moral duty connected with slavery as resting 
upon the nation or upon the citizens of the Free States. What the 
abolitionists affected to desire, that they have prevented ; what they 
affected to deprecate, that they have insured. Those who wished to do 
something in the only practical way against the extension of slavery they 
have weakened and loaded with a heavy weight of odium. The same folly 
is now repeated by those who urge the conversion of this war into a war for 
emancipation. They clamor for a blow to be struck against slavery itself, 
unmindful that Providence has already foreshadowed the decay and end 
of that institution in such terms as are clearly intelligible even to human 
apprehension. They are eager to be made the instruments of God's 
displeasure against an abhorred system, neglecting the palpable deter- 
mination of Providence that the system shall perish by the suicidal folly 
of those who uphold it. No more instructive lesson could be left for 
future imitators of the selfishness, arrogance, and wickedness of the 
ruling Southern interest than is given in its destruction by its own hands 
and in consequence of its own grasping and treacherous conduct ; but 
foolish zealots would fain weaken the force of this example, and would 
leave it for future ages to believe that wickedness has perished, not by 
its own venom, but by some external interference.' 

" What if Mr. Winthrop, with the additional lights now be- 
fore him, setting its truth in the blaze of a noonday sun, should 
think now, as the ' Advertiser' thought in 1861, that ' the folly 
of those who urged the conversion of this war into an emanci- 
pation war ' is the same ' insane folly ' which at other periods 
in our history ' has blinded men's eyes to the practical good 
which Providence has placed ready to hand' ? What if Mr. 
Winthrop should think now, as the 'Advertiser' thought on 
the 7th of October, 18G1, that it is only 'foolish zealots' who 
would fain weaken a great historical lesson by thrusting them- 
selves forward where they are not wanted, to ' make themselves 
the instruments of God's displeasure against an abhorred 
system,' thereby 'neglecting the palpable determination of 
Providence that the system should perish by the suicidal folly 
of those who uphold it ' ? Shall it be cited to the reproach of 
Mr. Winthrop that, after more than three years of war, when 
the ' insane folly ' against which the ' Advertiser ' prophe- 



ROBERT C. TTINTHROP. 257 

sied in October, 1861, has become history written in blood, 
he should be only more and more of the same mind that he 
was in 1861 ? Is it required that he should add self-stultifica- 
tion to the odium of political inconsistency, in order to estab- 
lish a status for sagacity, according to the notion of that useful 
quality current among certain people in Boston ? We ask the 
question. It is one for others to answer." 

Extracts from Mr. Winthrop's letters are again 
resumed : — 

[Oct. 23, 1864.] Thanks for your compliments to speeches 
with which you do not altogether agree. As to the New 
York meeting and your indisposition to ' train in such com- 
pany,' I think I could find as bad company on the other side. 
At any rate, among the officers or speakers at that meeting 
were James Gallatin, William H. Aspinwall, Royal Phelps, 
John Jacob Astor, Henry Grinnell, our old friend Tallmadge, 
and other Conservative men of high standing, to say nothing 
of Gov. Joel Parker of New Jersey and Judge Daly. In 
accepting the invitation, however, I did not look to the com- 
pany, but to the Cause, and I could come to no other conclu- 
sion after giving the subject my best consideration. The 
chance of electing McClellan is a very small one, but the 
movement has done good already by stirring up the Adminis- 
tration, and through them the Army. Sheridan's victory was 
the first fruits, and I hope Richmond will soon fall. If we 
can frighten the Administration into finishing up the war 
themselves, instead of prolonging it (as I think they have 
heretofore been willing to do) in order to accomplish their 
peculiar policy and secure their own re-election, the result 
will be for the benefit of all concerned. A very insolent tone 
prevails here towards all who cannot find it in their conscience 
to support Lincoln. I was fully prepared to encounter abuse, 
but I have been a good deal disgusted by the patronizing tone 
of a letter in the ' Advertiser,' purporting to come from a ' sor- 

17 



258 A MEMOIR OF 

rowful ' friend of mine, who expressed the hope that, in view of 
my ' honorable antecedents and pure personal character,' my 
' defection ' might be received in silence ! Defection from what? 
Not from the Republican party, which I never consented to 
j in 9 — n or certainly from the Democratic party, with which 
I have never voted, save as a choice of evils. The McClellan 
managers, by the bye, think so well of my New London speech 
that they have had it stereotyped, and, besides my own edition, 
200,000 copies are being circulated as campaign documents. 
I fear you will not apply for many extra ones. My nomina- 
tion at the head of the Democratic electoral ticket in this 
State was without my knowledge, but, feeling as I did, I 
could not refuse it, though I was sorry to be placed in a sort 
of antagonistic position to Everett. At the time I started 
for New York, he did not seem to have quite made up his 
mind with regard to his own course, and we have since agreed 
that nothing shall disturb those personal relations which have 
so lono- existed between us. This is a time when men must 
think for themselves and act upon their own convictions. 
Misrepresentation apart, I have no fear of my war record, 
and if T ever spoke from the depths of my own convictions 
it has been in this canvass. 

[Nov. 7.] Yesterday's mail brought me a New York 
' Times ' of the 5th, containing a tirade against myself a 
column long, as well as a notification that I had just been 
elected in the same city a Vice-President of the American 
Bible Society. Thus the bane and the antidote may be said 
to have come together. To-day I get from anonymous sources 
two clippings without date, by which it appears that our old 
acquaintance the Ilowadji is belaboring me in different parts 
of the country, using as a stick the name and fame of my 
poor kinsman Theodore. It appears, this time, that I am 
' a follower of Calhoun,' who must be a good deal tickled by 
this assertion if he is in any condition to appreciate its humor. 
I don't think Curtis really means to be unfair, and I rather 
like him. In fact, if all accounts are true, I like him better 
than President Lincoln does. 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 259 

As the allusions in the foregoing extract may be 
obscure to some readers, it is as well to mention that 
our late corresponding member, George William Curtis, 
was long familiarly known as "the Howadji," from the 
titles of two of his early works, and that an amusing 
story — probably exaggerated — was continually crop- 
ping up in the newspapers to the effect that Abraham 
Lincoln originally conceived an unreasoning distaste 
for his society, on account of his habit of parting his 
hair in the middle, — a practice which then savored 
of effeminacy to the unsophisticated Western mind. 
In the first volume of Mr. Curtis's Orations and Ad- 
dresses, published in 1893, will be found a lecture on 
" Political Infidelity," stated by the editor to have been 
"delivered more than fifty times in the course of 1864 
and I860," in which Mr. Winthrop figures to the extent 
of a couple of pages, from which I quote the following 
spirited outburst : — 

" Young men of Massachusetts, young men of New England, 
two Winthrops appeal to you in this hour of national peril, 
both intelligent, refined, accomplished. The one living, sup- 
ported by Fernando Wood and Isaiah Rynders, cheered by 
Jefferson Davis and every rebel, by the London ' Times ' and 
the men who built and sailed and fought the ' Alabama,' by 
every enemy of the American government and principle in 
the world, — it is Robert C. Winthrop, who follows John C. 
Calhoun, and bids you follow him. The other dead, fallen in 
the first fierce battle of the war to maintain the government, 
dead in his beautiful youth, full of hope, full of faith, full of 
fidelity to the American principle and the American people, 
beckoning to you as he beckoned to his brave boys in the very 
moment when he fell forward into death and glory, — it is 
Theodore Winthrop, who follows liberty and the Union, and 
who whispers to you, 'Follow me, follow me.' " 



2C0 A MEMOIR OF 

The article in the New York " Times," above alluded 
to, is headed " Degenerate Sons," and is also too long 
to cite in full, but its most stinging passage is the 
following : — 

" The student of history hereafter will hear with profound 
surprise that the purest of the New England Puritans, in the 
great crisis of his country's history, placed himself on the side 
of oppression against the party of liberty, excusing slavery, 
misrepresenting its opponents, urging a base compromise and 
a peace which would have wrecked liberty and country alto- 
gether, condemning that legislation which will be the admira- 
tion of all time, and throwing the influence of an accomplished 
scholar and gentleman, and of a name most respected for its 
association with the upholding of human rights, on the side of 
a most base, cowardly, reactionary, and oppressive party, which 
would willingly see the whole North beneath a slave oligarchy. 
We can imagine how that stern old Puritan, John Winthrop, 
who was ready to choose a wilderness for conscience' sake, 
would frown on this unworthy position of his descendant. 
How he can reconcile it with his reason, his knowledge, or 
his conscience, we do not wish to know. We regret it most 
for his own sake, and the sake of a noble, historic name." 

Extracts from Mr. Winthrop's letters are here 
resumed : — 

[Nov. 16, 1864.] I have received from you neither letter 
of sympathy nor visit of consolation ; but if you read my little 
speech at the Sailors' Fair the night after the election, you 
will see that my equanimity has not been seriously disturbed. 
I confess that I hoped we should have received a larger share 
of the electoral vote, but it would have been little short of a 
miracle to have prevailed against all the power and patronage 
of the Administration, civil and military. If it be true, as I 
hear it credibly s'tated, that McClellan's popular vote is larger 
than that of Lincoln in 1860, and that a change of only 30,000 



EOBERT C. WINTHROP. 261 

votes, judiciously sprinkled over different States, would have 
reversed the result, it is certainly something to be proud of, — 
or, as some people might prefer to say, something to be 
ashamed of. You claim, to be sure, most of the good com- 
pany ; but as I found myself associated at the polls here with 
such men as Dr. James Jackson, Benjamin R. Curtis, George 
W. Lyman, Ticknor, William H. Gardiner, William Gray, 
Colonel Aspinwall, Chandler Robbins, Dr. Blagden, Hillard, 
and others of whom I spare you the enumeration, I am 
content, — however much I may regret that you and Everett 
and Levi Lincoln, and a hundred others, thought differently. 
At any rate, I rejoice that the election is safely over, and that 
Sumner's brutal speech has not been accepted as the keynote 
to the policy of the victors. Everybody else has spoken with 
moderation and good feeling. The President, especially, 
received the announcement of his election in a manner to 
conciliate every one. I don't know that I can quite indorse 
all that Everett said of him last evening ; but as I came in 
for a share of the compliments of that speech, I can hardly 
question its justice. 

[Dec. 10.] I dined yesterday with William Amory — the 
Friday Club — all of whom, as it turned out, had voted 
McClellan except Agassiz and Chief Justice Bigelow. Caleb 
Cushing was there as a guest, but his politics I doubt if any 
one can accurately define except himself. He and I walked 
home together about midnight, when he volunteered the 
remark that my New London speech was the most effective 
one on that side, and that if McClellan's cause had been uni- 
formly advocated in the same spirit, and the campaign run on 
those lines, he might have been triumphantly elected. I had 
already learned, on good authority, that both Lincoln and 
Seward had expressed a substantially similar opinion, which 
I consider one of the greatest compliments ever paid me, 
there being no better judges of the ability of campaign 
speeches than these three men. Do not, however, repeat all 
this as coming from me, as it would only sound like vanity 



2G2 A MEMOIR OF 

on nvy part ; but it must one day go on record. Speaking of 
Mc( Ilellan, I only recently read a letter of his to William H. 
Aspinwall, written before his nomination, which confirms 
all I had believed in regard to his views. To my mind, 
Everett's speech to the electors gives undeserved importance 
to the letter of Alexander H. Stephens. I like Stephens 
personally, but I think he always writes for momentary 
effect, and he has written on both sides of the Rebellion. 
He is a man of impulse and prejudice, who has long been 
at odds with Jefferson Davis. Furthermore, Everett's sug- 
gestion that there was ' no display of force ' at the late elec- 
tion does not seem to me quite accurate, in view of the cannon 
at the corners of the streets in Providence and Butler's array 
of regiments in New York. 

[Jan. 22, 1865.] I am very glad that you and other friends 
are so well pleased with what you are good enough to call 
'the justice and the eloquence' of my tribute to Everett at 
Faneuil Hall. I was better satisfied with it myself than I 
generally am with my own efforts, and I certainly spoke from 
my whole heart. His death was a great shock to me, and I 
shall miss him profoundly. When I first entered the Legis- 
lature he honored me with a flattering degree of confidence, 
and for some thirty years back he has been perhaps the one 
man, living here in Boston, upon whose united regard and 
prudence, upon whose commingled ' blood and judgment,' as 
Shakspere hath it, I could rely at a pinch. If, early in my 
career, I had made a speech and were about to print it, — or 
had written an address and were about to deliver it, — I could 
send it freely and confidently for Ids examination, sure that 
his friendship would induce him to make any suggestions 
which he thought for my advantage, while his judgment was 
a guaranty that they would be good and reasonable. In later 
life we had one or two differences of opinion upon public 
questions, but they never cast even a momentary shadow 
over our relations. His uniform kindness and confidence 
continued to the end. Of his scholarship and his oratory I 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 263 

was, as you know, a warm admirer. I delighted in listening 
to him on great occasions, considering him, in his peculiar 
line, unrivalled. 

On the 4th of April, 1865, by invitation of the City 
Council, Mr. Winthrop was one of the speakers at a 
Faneuil Hall meeting to celebrate the fall of Richmond, 
with reference to which I find the following entry in his 
diary : — 

No Conservative spoke but myself. Frederick Douglass 
(whom I never saw before) did well, and other colored men 
took part. It was odd company for me, but I can rejoice at 
the success of the Union arms in any company. 

His remarks were necessarily brief, and, after some 
expressions of congratulation suitable to the occasion, 
he added : — 

Let me express the hope that in all our rejoicings, now and 
hereafter, we shall exhibit a spirit worthy of those who recog- 
nize a Divine Hand in what has occurred. Let no boastful 
exultations mingle with our joy ; no brutal vindictiveness 
tarnish our triumph. Let us indulge no spirit of vengeance 
or of extermination toward the conquered, nor breathe out 
threatenings and slaughter against foreign nations. The 
great work of war accomplished, the even greater work of 
peace will remain to be undertaken, and it will demand all our 
energies and all our endurance. Let us show our gratitude 
to God by doing all we can to mitigate the sorrows and suffer- 
ings of those upon whom the calamities of war have fallen. 
Let us exert ourselves with fresh zeal in ministering to the 
sick and wounded, in binding up the broken hearts, in pro- 
viding for widows and orphans, for refugees and freedmen, 
in reuniting, as fast and as far as we can, the chords of friend- 
ship and good-will wherever they have been shattered or swept 
away, and thus exhibit our land in that noblest of all atti- 



A 



264 A MEMOIR OF 

tudes, — the only attitude worthy of a Christian nation, — 
that of seeking to restore and to maintain peace and brother- 
hood at home and abroad. Thus only can our triumph be 
worthily celebrated. 

Six days later, on the 10th of April, he was invited 
to address a similar meeting, in celebration of Lee's 
surrender ; but he was about starting for New York to 
attend the funeral of a young kinsman of his, Frederick 
Winthrop, who, after a brilliant military career, during 
which lie had attained the rank of Brigadier-General, 
had just been killed at Five Forks. Two days after his 
return came the news of President Lincoln's assassina- 
tion, the circumstances of which were so atrocious, and 
the grief excited by his loss so intense, as to create, for 
the time being, in some quarters, a feeling of resentment 
against persons who had been prominent in opposing his 
re-election, of whom, in Massachusetts, Mr. Winthrop 
had been chief. He was privately waited on by a 
Republican friend, who explained that not only had 
remonstrances been made against his being asked to 
speak at Faneuil Hall on the subject, but that it was 
thought wise for him to make his health an excuse for 
not being present at the meeting, lest in the inflamed 
state of the public mind he should be subjected to some 
manifestation of disrespect. He replied that, so far as 
speaking was concerned, he much preferred to pay a 
tribute to Mr. Lincoln later and in his own way, but 
that his absence on such an occasion might be mis- 
construed. He accordingly attended on foot, and was 
unable to perceive, either in the streets or on the plat- 
form, that he was treated with anything but courtesy. 
At the Annual Meeting of this Society, a few days after- 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 265 

ward, in introducing, on behalf of the Standing Com- 
mittee, a series of patriotic resolutions, he took occasion 
to say : — 

The awful crime which was perpetrated at Washington on 
Friday last would have filled our hearts with horror, even had 
it only involved the life of any of the humblest of our fellow- 
citizens. But it has taken from us the chosen Chief Magis- 
trate of the nation, — the man who, of all other men, could 
be least spared to the administration of our government, — 
the man who was most trusted, most relied on, most beloved 
by the loyal people of the Union. Beyond all doubt, the life 
of President Lincoln was a thousandfold the most precious life 
in our whole land ; and there are few of us, I think, who would 
not willingly have rescued it at the risk, or even at the sacri- 
fice, of our own. The cheerful courage, the shrewd sagacity, 
the earnest zeal, the imperturbable good-nature, the untiring 
fidelity to duty, the ardent devotion to the Union, the firm 
reliance upon God which he has displayed during his whole 
administration ; and the eminent moderation and magnanimity, 
both towards political opponents and public enemies, which he 
has manifested since his recent and triumphant re-election, 
— have won for him a measure of regard, of respect, and of 
affection, such as no other man of our age has ever enjoyed. 
The appalling and atrocious crime, of which he has been the 
victim, will only deepen the impression of his virtues and his 
excellences, and he will go down to history with the double 
crown of the foremost patriot and the foremost martyr of this 
great struggle against treason and rebellion. 

It so happened that the volume of Mr. Winthrop's 
collected addresses and speeches covering the period of 
the civil war was published in 1867, during a long 
absence of his in Europe, and when he was not in the 
way of observing all that was said of it by the press. 
Of the notices which reached him the most discriminating 



2G6 A MEMOIR OF 

was one which appeared in the " Round Table," a short- 
lived New York weekly, — a notice headed "Robert C. 
Winthrop," too long to quote, — combining many com- 
pliments with some pleasant satire, and apparently from 
the pen of a total stranger, as the writer says in 
opening : — 

" No one, of course, could keep even the surface run of poli- 
tics without knowing Mr. Winthrop's name, as the head of 
the anti-radicals of Massachusetts, — that dauntless, out- 
numbered few, that phalanx of political nine-pins, standing 
up heroically at each election to be bowled over as part of 
the national game of suffrage. But to our remembrance we 
had never before read or heard a speech of his, and he was to 
us as merely historical a character as Lycurgus." 

To his own copy of this article Mr. Winthrop ap- 
pended some manuscript comments, from which I 
extract the following : — 

Few cleverer things than this have ever been written 
about me or my books. The sharp contrast presented be- 
tween what I said in opposing President Lincoln's re-election, 
in October, 1864, and what I said of him after his assassina- 
tion, in April, 18(35, is very telling, and I perceived this 
would be so when the volume went to press. But the change 
was not so much in my opinions as in the attitude of Mr. 
Lincoln. Nothing is more certain — or, at least, more clear to 
my own mind — than that, during the last six months of his 
life, his whole policy was modified, if not absolutely reversed. 
The strong opposition which was made to his re-election, and 
even to his nomination, would seem to have awakened him to 
a sense that he must adopt a new course. He abandoned all 
interference with his generals. He gave Grant carte blanche, 
and allowed him to carry on the campaign entirely on mili- 
tary principles, manifesting meantime a most amiable and 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 2G7 

conciliatory disposition toward the South, and seemingly ready 
to exert all his influence to secure peace. He even took his 
carpet-bag and went down to James River to meet the South- 
ern Commissioners, in order to leave nothing undone to pro- 
mote this result. Those who had opposed his re-election might 
thus deplore his loss without a particle of inconsistency, and 
his death by the bullet of a madman took away all heart for 
remembering anything but his virtues and his patriotism. 

[July 23, 1865.] From what little I have seen of con- 
tested elections in England, I imagine it is not uncommon 
there for public men to be unexpectedly hooted ; but after a 
somewhat stirring political career of more than thirty years 
in this country, I met with my first experience of anything of 
the sort the other day, and, of all places in the world, at 
Harvard. Two years ago, as you may remember, I resigned 
my Presidency of the Alumni, but I still attend their meet- 
ings, and I made a point of being present at the one on 
Commencement Day, as matters connected with the proposed 
Memorial Hall were to be discussed. Holmes, who succeeded 
me as President, was late in arriving ; and not to delay business, 
some one suggested that I, as ex-President, should take the 
chair, which, as a purely temporary and pro forma arrange- 
ment, I proceeded to do ; when, from different quarters, there 
proceeded a perceptible number of grunts (I will not call 
them groans) of disapproval. I, of course, took no notice, 
and proceeded with the business until Holmes arrived ; but on 
subsequently asking Charles G. Loring what it meant, he 
frankly told me that there still exists soreness about my oppo- 
sition to Lincoln, and that protests had been made against my 
being asked to speak at the Commemoration exercises two 
days later. I had no wish to speak there, — indeed, as a rule, 
I am too often asked to speak and decline half my invita- 
tions, — but the little demonstration I have described is 
significant of the temper of the times. Undeterred by 
it, I returned to Cambridge on Friday, breakfasted with 
General Meade at the Porcellian Club, and assisted at the 



H 



2G8 A MEMOIR OF 

exercises and dinner. It was a fine occasion, richly merited 
by our young heroes, but we sadly missed Everett for the 
eloquence. . . . Our New England people are full of appre- 
hension that the Union is to be restored too soon, and that 
the Southern States are about to reorganize themselves upon 
their old principles. For myself, I do not see what Johnson 
could do except what he is doing and has done. The idea of 
holding the South in subjection for an indefinite period, until 
negro suffrage can be forced upon them, is abhorrent to me. 
Punish the immediate authors and abettors of the rebellion if 
you will, but it will not be wise to make too many martyrs 
for the South to canonize. It should be remembered, more- 
over, how many Southern statesmen have been educated to the 
doctrine of State Rights and Secession, and that what, from our 
point of view, would have been criminal, was with them the 
simple carrying out of their own conscientious convictions. 



XL 

A great happiness was in store for Mr. Winthrop in 
his marriage, Nov. 15, 1865, to Adele, widow of John 
Eliot Thayer of Boston, and daughter of Francis Granger 
of Canandaigua, one of the most valued of his political 
and personal friends. 1 He had known her from girlhood. 
They had in common hosts of friends, a real love of 
hospitality and cultivated social intercourse, coupled 
with an active interest in the promotion of charitable 
and religious undertakings ; but fortunately they were 

1 Francis Granger was candidate for Vice-President in 1836, on the 
ticket with General Harrison, became Postmaster-General in the latter's 
Cabinet, served a number of years in Congress, and twice ran for Gov- 
ernor in New York, where a section of the Whig party for some time 
known as "Silver Grays" took their name from the color of his hair. 
His father, Gideon Granger, was a Cabinet minister under both Jefferson 
and Madison. 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 269 

not alike in temperament, as Mr. Winthrop's uncertain 
health often made him despondent, while his wife's 
native buoyancy of disposition supplied the precise 
tonic he needed. 

[July 4, 1866.] When I saw the President at the White 
House in May, he impressed me more agreeably than ever 
before, and however much I may regret some of the incidents 
of his course, I rejoice he has made a stand against the 
extremists. Lincoln, I believe, would have done the same, 
though with much more tact and a greater chance of success. 
Johnson is certainly an able writer, — more so than I had 
given him credit for. Dean Milman says his December mes- 
sage was equal to any state paper of England's best days. 
The Sumner-Stevens faction are, in my judgment, the most 
pestilent fellows in the land, and it is pleasant to see them 
' hoist with their own petard.' Whatever may come of the 
Philadelphia Convention, it is called in the true spirit. Good- 
will and kindness will do more to restore the Union than all 
the Constitutional amendments that can be devised. I have 
done my best to raise money to alleviate the individual cases 
of distress you mention among our friends, but I am appalled 
by all I hear of widespread suffering among Southern widows 
and orphans. I dare say most of them were flagrant rebels, 
but I cannot consider this a reason for allowing them to 
starve. I am afraid that I am a poor hater, and should be 
constrained to plead guilty to the charge of having parum 
odissc malos cives. 

[Sept. 17.] You will have noticed that I declined to head 
the Massachusetts delegation to Philadelphia, where I had 
some reason to think the Chairmanship of the Convention 
awaited me. Since then Blatchford, Raymond, and Co. have 
vainly endeavored to impress me into addressing their mass 
meeting in New York. The truth is, such acceptances would 
readily be construed as a willingness on my part to stay in 
politics, which I really loathe more than ever. My wife is 



270 A MEMOIR OF 

anxious to go abroad on a long absence, and this seems a 
favorable time to take up the position of ' independent voter,' 
and leave the field to younger men. Moreover, though I 
heartily concurred with the general views of those by whom 
the Convention was called, 1 have no faith that I could have 
accomplished any good there. . . . Our extreme Radicals have 
learned that they thrive best upon mischief, and they will do 
their utmost to keep the country by the ears. There are, 
however, some notable exceptions. A conversation I recently 
had with John A. Andrew has led me to augur well of his 
moderation should he succeed Sumner in the Senate, which, 
I hear, is talked of. He is young enough to render important 
service there. 

Mr. Winthrop's letter declining to be a delegate 
to the National Union Convention at Philadelphia in 
August, 1866, is to be found in full in his second 
volume, and closed as follows : — 

Congress has ample means of protecting itself, and of pro- 
tecting the country, from the presence of disloyal men in the 
halls of legislation, by the simple exercise of the power which 
each branch possesses, of deciding without appeal on the quali- 
fications of its own members. Had the case of each individual 
Senator or Representative elected from the States lately in 
rebellion been taken up by itself, and fairly considered on its 
own merits, agreeably to the wise suggestions of President 
Johnson, no one could have complained, whatever might have 
been the result. This great question of representation, how- 
ever, is not a question which concerns only the Southern 
States, who, I know, are regarded by not a few unrelenting 
men as having forfeited all rights which the Northern States 
are bound to respect. It is a question which concerns the 
Constitution and the whole country. It was to enforce and 
vindicate that Constitution that blood and treasure have 
been poured out so lavishly during the late four years of civil 



ROBERT C. AVINTHROP. 271 

war. Who could have believed in advance that a year and 
a half after that war had ended, and after the Union had 
been rescued and restored so far as our gallant armies and 
navies could accomplish it, nearly one-third of the States 
should still be seen knocking in vain at the doors of the 
Capitol, and should be denied even a hearing in the councils 
of the nation ? Such a course may, indeed, be calculated to 
prolong the predominance of a party, but it seems to me 
utterly inconsistent with the supremacy of the Constitution. 
I have no disposition, however, to indulge in any imputations 
either upon parties or upon individuals. I hope that a spirit 
of forbearance and moderation will prevail at Philadelphia, 
notwithstanding the insulting and proscriptive tone in which 
the Convention has been assailed by so many of the oppo- 
nents of the President of the United States. But I shall be 
greatly disappointed, I confess, if through the influence of 
that Convention, or through some other influence, the people 
of the whole country are not soon aroused to the danger of 
allowing the Constitution to be longer the subject of partial 
and discretionary observance on the part of those who are 
sworn to support it. It is vain to offer test oaths to others, 
if we fail to fulfil our own oaths. The necessities of a state 
of war may be an excuse for many irregularities, both legisla- 
tive and executive. But now that, by the blessing of God, 
a state of peace has been restored to us, we are entitled to the 
Constitution and the Union in all their legitimate authority 
and extent. Nothing, in my judgment, could be of worse 
influence upon the future career of our country than that 
Congress should even seem to be holding in abeyance any 
provisions of the Constitution, until they shall have been 
changed under duress, in order to suit the opinions, or secure 
the interests, of a predominant party. 

Many conservative men in different parts of the 
country were sanguine of success at the November 
elections and deplored Mr. Winthrop's withdrawal, as 



272 A MEMOIR OF 

is shown not merely by private letters, but by the fol- 
lowing extracts from two newspapers which I have not 
been able to identify : — 

" Mr. Winthrop's indisposition to attend the Convention at 
Philadelphia is much regretted by his numerous friends there 
assembled. Had he been present, he would undoubtedly 
have been chosen to preside, and after the elections of 
November have harmonized the country and restored the 
Union, he would have found himself standing in a high posi- 
tion of honor and usefulness. Such an opportunity for im- 
portant and honorable service is not often presented to an 
individual, however exalted his ability and attainments, and 
it is a matter of regret, both on his own account and that of 
the nation, when an eminent citizen is unable to take advan- 
tage of an opportunity which cannot be expected to occur 
more than once in a lifetime." 



"Mr. Winthrop has indorsed Mr. Johnson's Presidency, 
which is more than Mr. Johnson would do for Mr. Win- 
throp's Speakership. The former used to have a special 
spite against the eminent representative from Boston, by whose 
modes of life his own primitive habits were rebuked. The 
calm undemonstrative manners of the polished Speaker prob- 
ably struck him as being of a patrician character, and thus 
all the ' plebeian ' in his nature was aroused and irritated. . . . 
The course of political events has brought the two men to- 
gether, as prominent members of the same party, and the Presi- 
dent might call his ablest and most distinguished supporter 
in New England to the State Department, should Mr. Sew- 
ard carry into effect the intention often attributed to him, of 
retiring to the shades of Auburn. Some of the Southrons 
are displeased that Mr. Winthrop did not attend the Phila- 
delphia Convention, but that is a feeling which will pass 
away like a summer's cloud." 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 273 

If, on one or two subsequent occasions, Mr. Win- 
throp's name figured prominently in connection with 
some political meeting, it was without his knowledge 
and against his will. If, in some few subsequent elec- 
tions, he was persuaded to declare his personal prefer- 
ences for a particular candidate, he made a point of 
doing so briefly and unobtrusively. What may be 
termed the controversial period of his life — a period 
covering nearly a third of a century — ended with the 
year 1866, by his own choice and to his own perma- 
nent satisfaction. Thenceforth his time was devoted 
to objects and to institutions, concerning which there 
could be but few differences of opinion, in some of 
which he had long been interested, while with others 
— one, in particular — he now first became identified. 
As sometimes happens to public men, it had been his 
good fortune, in the course of his political career, to 
arouse, by his printed speeches, an active interest in 
himself on the part of persons residing at a distance 
whom he had never seen, or whose acquaintance he 
did not make till long afterward. One of these per- 
sons proved to be George Peabody, then a banker 
in London, afterward the famous philanthropist, who 
was accustomed to say that if it were in his power to 
choose a President of the United States "that office 
would fall upon Robert C. Winthrop." The latter 
would hardly have been human if he had not been 
flattered by the repeated expression of a preference 
which, though not wholly unprecedented, was certainly 
uncommon ; and if anything further had been needed to 
endear Mr. Peabody to Mr. Winthrop, it would have 
been the gift by the former — by his own volition, and 

18 



274 A MEMOIR OF 

solely to gratify the latter — of the sum of $20,000 to 
this Society. Like most men of exceptional wealth, 
Mr. Peabody had a very decided will of his own, but 
he was in the habit, in the latter part of his life, of 
seeking Mr. Winthrop's advice upon a variety of sub- 
jects, more particularly his educational foundations in 
this country, at the head of two of which Mr. Win- 
throp willingly consented to serve : the Peabody Mu- 
seum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Cambridge, and 
the great Peabody Trust for Southern Education, an 
object into which he entered heart and soul. The win- 
ter of 1867 was largely occupied in visits to Wash- 
ington and elsewhere, to set on foot this munificent 
undertaking, but in the ensuing spring Mr. Winthrop 
went abroad, returning home in the autumn of 18G8. 
Some particulars of this, his third visit to Europe, may 
be found in the " Reminiscences of Foreign Travel," 
already cited, as well as in the tenth volume of the 
first series of this Society's Proceedings, which con- 
tains letters written by him from abroad to our late 
Vice-President, Charles Deane. 

The later volumes of Mr. Winthrop's collected Ad- 
dresses and Speeches contain nearly one hundred and 
fifty utterances, of greater or less length, in various 
places and on various occasions, from 1806 to 1886, to 
say nothing of published letters and other papers. I 
have no intention of specifically alluding to a tithe of 
these productions, which include much historical mate- 
rial, together with tributes to distinguished men in dif- 
ferent countries with whom he had been personally 
associated, and to honored members of this Society. 
I shall refer only, and in proper order, to those which 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 275 

attracted most attention. In January, 1869, he de- 
livered at the Lowell Institute in Boston the first 
of a series of historical lectures upon Massachusetts 
and its Early History. In February, 1870, he pro- 
nounced an elaborate but discriminating eulogy at the 
funeral of his friend George Peabody, whose benefac- 
tions to the poor of London had resulted in his body 
being brought across the sea with almost royal honors, 
and in his obsequies being attended by a son of Queen 
Victoria. On the 21st of December of the same year, 
he was the orator of the day at Plymouth, at the cele- 
bration of the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary 
of the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers. From his ora- 
tion on this occasion — one of the longest of his com- 
memorative productions 1 — I quote a single passage 
because it exhibits the general character of his religious 
views, which, to some devout persons of his own com- 
munion, seemed almost as misguided as his political 
opinions, — a passage characterized by the " American 
Churchman " as " pretty, but shallow " : — 

1 In the "New Englander " for April, 1871, is to be found a notice- 
able article entitled "Winthrop and Emerson on Forefathers' Day," 
describing and contrasting Mr. Winthrop's oration at Plymouth, and 
that of Ralph Waldo Emerson before the New England Society of 
New York. Of the former it says, " All are agreed that Mr. Winthrop 
performed his part in a way truly noble and satisfactory. Those who 
were permitted to be within the sound of his voice in that service 
count it one of the fortunate days of their lives. The occasion was 
so grand in itself, and the ancestral associations came flocking back 
upon him so, that the orator was lifted out of himself and borne up- 
ward into a most commanding position. All his resources of previous 
culture were brought into the fullest and happiest play. It was a feli- 
citous day for him as well as for those who heard him. Nothing he 
has ever done will be remembered to his honor more surely and certainly 
than this." His own scribbling diary contains the following brief entry : 
" Everybody seemed pleased, and, for a wonder, I was almost satisfied 
with myself. Laus Deo." 



270 A MEMOIR OF 

Few persons, I presume, will doubt that had the Church 
of England, between 1608 and 1620, been what it is to-day, 
and its Bishops and Archbishops such in life and in spirit as 
those who have recently presided at London and Canterbury, 
Brewster and Bradford would hardly have left Scrooby, and 
the * Mayflower ' might long have been employed in less inter- 
esting ways than in bringing Separatists to Plymouth Rock. 
As that church and its prelates then were, let us thank God 
that such Separatists were found! An Episcopalian myself, 
by election as well as by education, and warmly attached to 
the forms and the faith in which I was brought up ; believ- 
ino- that the Church of England has rendered inestimable 
service to the cause of religion in furnishing a safe and sure 
anchorage in so many stormy times, when the minds of men 
were ' tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of 
doctrine ; ' and prizing the Prayer-Book as second only to the 
Bible in the richness of its treasures of prayer and praise, — 
I yet rejoice as heartily as any Congregationalist who listens 
to me, that our Pilgrim Fathers were Separatists. I rejoice, 
too, that the Puritan Fathers of Massachusetts, who followed 
them to these shores ten years afterward, though, to the 
last, they 'esteemed it their honor to call the Church of 
England their dear mother, and could not part from their 
native country where she specially resideth, without much 
sadness of heart and many tears,' were, if not technically 
and professedly, yet to all intents and purposes, Separatists 
also. I rejoice that the prelatical assumptions and tyrannies 
of that clay were resisted. The Church of England would 
never have been the noble church it has since become, had 
there been no seasonable protest against its corruptions, its 
extravagant formalism, and its overbearing intolerance. . . . 

Let those who will, indulge in the dream, or cherish the 
waking vision, of a single universal Church on earth, recog- 
nized and accepted of men, whose authority is binding on 
every conscience, and decisive of every point of faith or form. 
To the eye of God, indeed, such a church may be visible 



KOBERT C. WINTHROP. 277 

even now, in ' the blessed company of all faithful people,' in 
whatever region they may dwell, with whatever organization 
they may be connected, with Him as their head ' of whom the 
whole family in earth and heaven is named.' And as, in some 
grand orchestra, hundreds of performers, each with his own 
instrument and his own separate score, strike widely variant 
notes, and produce sounds, sometimes in close succession and 
sometimes at lengthened intervals, which heard alone would 
seem to be wanting in everything like method or melody, but 
which heard together are found delighting the ear, and rav- 
ishing the soul, with a flood of magnificent harmony, as they 
give concerted expression to the glowing conceptions of some 
mighty master, — even so, it may be, from the differing, 
broken, and often seemingly discordant strains of sincere 
seekers after God, the Divine ear, upon which no lisp of the 
voice or breathing of the heart is lost, catches only a com- 
bined and glorious anthem of prayer and praise. But to 
human ears such harmonies are not vouchsafed. The Church, 
in all its majestic unity, shall be revealed hereafter. The 
' Jerusalem which is the mother of us all, is above ; ' and we 
can only hope that, in the providence of God, its gates shall 
be wider, and its courts fuller, and its members quickened 
and multiplied, by the very differences of form and of doc- 
trine which have divided Christians from each other on earth, 
and which have created something of competition and rivalry, 
and even of contention, in their efforts to advance the ends of 
their respective denominations. Absolute religious uniform- 
ity, as poor human nature is now constituted, would but too 
certainly be the cause, if it were not itself the consequence, 
of absolute religious indifference and stagnation. 

In August, 1871, he and Ralph Waldo Emerson were 
the principal speakers at a celebration by this Society of 
the centennial anniversary of the birthday of Walter 
Scott, and in the following summer he had a slight 
temporary relapse into politics. During the Presidential 



278 A MEMOIR OF 

canvass of 18G8 lie had been absent from home, but as 
the contest of 1872 approached he was one of those 
who hoped that Charles Francis Adams might head the 
opposition to the re-election of General Grant, as can- 
didate of the combined Democracy and "Liberal Re- 
publicans." This candidacy, however, was secured by 
Horace Greeley, whom Mr. Winthrop considered a 
remarkable man in his way, but a thoroughly unsafe 
politician, to whose kite was appended an even more 
objectionable tail, in the person of Gratz Brown of 
Missouri. He accordingly decided, as a choice of evils, 
to vote for Grant, of whom he had latterly seen a good 
deal in connection with the Peabody Trust, and for 
whom he had a personal liking. When this intention 
became bruited, he was urged to make a speech, or at 
least some public declaration of his views, which he 
declined to do, but consented to have published the 
following passage in a letter to Governor Clifford : 

[Aug. 8, 1872-1 When I accepted the chairmanship of the 
Southern Education Trustees, I resolved to keep out of poli- 
tics. If Mr. Adams had been nominated, I should have been 
seriously tempted to reconsider my resolution. As it is, I 
shall adhere to it firmly, except so far as giving my vote to 
General Grant. You and I will thus vote alike again, as we 
did in good old Whig times, and as we have not always done 
since. I certainly cannot support Greeley and the Coalition. 
I can see no safety for the country in their success. Neither 
reform nor reconciliation could result from so unnatural a 
combination, but only renewed discord and confusion. 

His intention for the first time to vote the Republi- 
can ticket in a general election excited a good deal of 
remark ; but the Greeley press ingeniously endeavored 



ROBERT C. TVTNTHROP. 279 

to ascribe a personal motive to it, and gave wide circu- 
lation to the following squib : — 

"Robert C. Winthrop cannot bear to be on the same side 
with Charles Sumner, and so has come out for Grant." 

[Brookline, Aug. 16, 1872.] I send you a slip from a 
Charleston paper, received yesterday from one of my South 
Carolina cousins. Was there ever greater rascality than 
seems to have been practised there? Can any one wonder 
that our friend Aiken and all the rest are ready for any change ? 
Yet I do not see how Grant and his Administration are in- 
volved in the responsibility. It is the first fruit, I presume, 
of unrestricted suffrage, black and white, which brought into 
office incompetent and unprincipled men. And for this, cer- 
tainly, Sumner and Greeley are quite as much responsible 
as anybody else. Indeed, I am inclined to think that their 
departure from among the supporters of the Administration 
may fairly be considered a not inconsiderable step towards its 
purification. I am not, however, disposed to join in the hue 
and cry against Sumner just now, because I think the violence 
of his philippic against Grant has defeated its purpose. 
Vituperation has become a second nature to him, if it were 
not original depravity, and we must all make allowance for a 
temperament which he may have been unable to resist. He 
sometimes reminds me of Pope's lines : — 

' Railing and praising were his usual themes, 
And both (to show his judgment) in extremes. 
So over-violent, or over-civil, 
That every man with him was God or Devil.' 

The canvass, thus far, strikes me as the most disgusting one 
in American history. Greeley travels about in his white coat, 
like the Candidate in the worst of old Roman days, soliciting 
votes for himself and playing humble to the multitude, in a 
style never before exhibited by a Presidential aspirant. It is 
loathsome beyond expression to any one who respects or loves 
his country. 



280 A MEMOIR OF 

[Aug. 21.] A report has reached me that there is a purpose 
in some quarters to put my name on the Grant electoral ticket. 
I cannot think such an idea can be seriously entertained, but it 
is quite out of the question. As between Grant and Greeley, 
I go for Grant, and that heartily, but it must be clearly under- 
stood that I do so as an Independent Conservative voter. . . . 
I see in a New York paper that ' a scholar of established repu- 
tation and high moral character ' has written from Cambridge 
to ' one of the most distinguished men of the country ' charg- 
ing that Grant was so drunk at Commencement ' as to excite 
a general feeling of anxiety and disgust.' It would be curious 
to ascertain the name of this scholar of established reputation 
and high moral character. You and Grant were more fortu- 
nate than I, if you got anything stronger than water at the 
Commencement dinner. The author of this shameful libel 
must have mistaken Gratz Brown at Yale for Grant at 
Harvard ! 

[Sept. 2.] Who do you think called here lately ? Sumner 
himself, — a rare shadow on my threshold. He was very agree- 
able, as he always can be when he chooses, but we eschewed 
politics, though, but for the presence of another visitor, I 
should have enjoyed an interchange of views. . . . The Fe- 
male Suffrage Resolution at the Republican Convention was 
ridiculous, and our friend Wilson is making a bad figure on 
the Know-Nothing business. But I shut my eyes to every- 
thing but the humiliation of having Greeley for President, 
and I rejoice that such a prospect is growing ' small by de- 
grees, and beautifully less.' 

[Oct. 29.] I earnestly hope, as you do, that the triumph 
which will be achieved next week will embolden the Presi- 
dent to bring some men around him for the next four years, 
in whom we shall all have confidence, and if you should prove 
to be one of them, it would give me a great deal of pleasure. 
I greatly fear, however, that the Butler-Loring interest will 
prevail in Massachusetts, and that nothing will be suffered 
to interfere with their prospects. Be this as it may, I, for 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 281 

one, have no disposition to re-enter the political circle. Be- 
sides your kind suggestion, Wilson has been dropping hints 
about my consenting to let my name be considered for a 
foreign mission, intimating that Grant would be entirely 
willing to make such an appointment if he (Wilson) could 
get it through the Senate, which he thinks he can, et cetera. 
I positively refused. I do not wish to be drawn into the 
position of indorsing the Republican party, nor would any- 
thing of the sort tempt me nowadays. If I go abroad again, 
as I dare say I shall, I prefer that it should be in the quiet 
way I have several times gone before. I have gradually 
accumulated so many friends in foreign countries that things 
are made very pleasant for me out there, and I should not 
fancy being tethered to a round of official duties. Wilson's 
obvious object is to strengthen Grant's second administration 
in the public mind, but I think he means kindly by me and 
I am not insensible to his soft speeches. No man did as 
much as he to arrest my Senatorial career twenty-two years 
ago, and we have exchanged some hard knocks since ; but 
in spite of all this I have acquired a sort of liking for 
him. It is certainly remarkable that he should have at- 
tained the position he has without the slightest early ad- 
vantages. I hope you managed to hear some of Tyndall's 
delightful lectures. He came out here to lunch and I had 
Agassiz to meet him. I found him an intelligent and agree- 
able fellow, and I am not without hope he may one day 
change his notions about religion. 

In February, 1873, at the dedication of the new 
Town Hall at Brookline, he delivered by request an 
address of considerable length and much local interest 
upon the Environs of Boston. In March he spoke in 
honor of his predecessor in the Presidency of this Soci- 
ety, his friend and his father's friend, James Savage. 
A little later in the same year, he unsuccessfully 






282 A MEMOIR OF 

endeavored to procure the election of his friend, Alex- 
ander H. Vinton, to the vacant bishopric of Massachu- 
setts, contributing to the literature of that contest a 
noticeable letter, signed " W." in the " Daily Advertiser " 
of March 13, 1873. Besides serving on the Standing 
Committee of the diocese and as Chairman of its " Trus- 
tees of Donations," he had been actively connected with 
the Episcopal Theological School at Cambridge, from 
its foundation in 1867. In the spring of 1873, a 
wealthy layman offered the much-needed addition of 
$100,000 to the funds of that institution on condition 
that it should thenceforth be controlled by High 
Churchmen. The published answer of the board of 
government, declining this proposal, was written by 
Mr. Winthrop, and it was one upon the tone and argu- 
ments of which he somewhat prided himself. 1 In De- 
cember of the same year he spoke in Faneuil Hall at 
the centennial celebration of the "Boston Tea-party," 
and on the 12th of March, 1874, it became his official 
duty to announce in fitting terms to this Society at its 
monthly meeting the loss of one of its honorary mem- 
bers, Millard Fillmore, and of one of its nominally resi- 
dent-members, Charles Sumner, whose death he had 
only learned the same morning. 

It is [said he] an event too solemn and too impressive to 
be the subject of any off-hand utterances. Yet, assembled 
here as we are to-day, with so striking an event uppermost 
in all our thoughts, it cannot be passed over in silence, cer- 
tainly not by me. To us, as a society, Mr. Sumner was, 
indeed, but little, his name having been added to our resi- 

1 A Statement by the Trustees of the Episcopal Theological School, 
Cambridge, Mass. John Wilson and Son, 1873. 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 283 

dent-roll only within a few months past, and it never having 
been convenient to him to be present at even one of our 
meetings. We had all sincerely hoped, however, that in 
some future interval between the sessions of Congress, in 
some breathing-time from his arduous and assiduous public 
labors, we might have enjoyed the benefit of his large 
acquaintance with historical subjects, and of the rich accom- 
plishments by which he was distinguished. That hope is 
now suddenly brought to an end, and we have only the sat- 
isfaction of knowing that his election, as one of our restricted 
number, afforded him a moment's gratification in what have 
so unexpectedly proved to be the last few months of his life. 

In the Senate of the United States, in which for more than 
three terms he has been so prominent and conspicuous a 
member, the gap created by his death cannot easily be 
measured. There, for so many years, he has been one of 
the observed of all observers. There, for so many years, 
scarce a word or an act of his has failed to be the subject 
of widespread attention and comment. No name has been 
oftener in the columns of the daily press, or on the lips of 
the people in all parts of the country, — sometimes for criti- 
cism, and even for censure, but far more generally for com- 
mendation and applause. Such a name, certainly, cannot 
pass from the rolls of living men without leaving a large 
void to many eyes and to many hearts. 

One of the pioneers in the cause of antislavery, while yet 
in private life, he breasted the billows of that raging contro- 
versy with unsparing energy, until the struggle ceased with 
the institution which had given rise to it. The same untir- 
ing energy was then transferred to what he regarded as the 
rights of the race which had been emancipated. Indeed, 
everything which could be associated with the idea of human 
rights was made the subject of his ardent advocacy, accord- 
ing to his own judgment and convictions. Devoting himself 
early, also, to the cause of peace, and making the relations 
of the United States with other nations a matter for special 



284 A MEMOIR OF 

study, his unwearied labors as Chairman of the Committee 
of Foreign Affairs for several years, and his acknowledged 
familiarity with international law, can never be undervalued 
or forgotten. 

As a writer, a lecturer, a debater, and an orator, he had 
acquired the strongest hold on public attention everywhere, 
both at home and abroad ; and few scholars have brought to 
the illustration of their topics, whether political or literary, 
the fruits of greater research. His orations and speeches, of 
which a new edition, revised by his own hand, is understood 
to be approaching a completion, cannot fail to be a rich store- 
house of classical and historical lore, and will certainly fur- 
nish a most valuable series of pictures, from his own point 
of view, of the stirring scenes to which they relate. 

The tidings of his death have come upon us with too 
painful a surprise to allow of our dwelling at length on his 
crowded and eventful public career. For myself, I need 
hardly say that any detailed discussion of his course might 
involve peculiar elements of delicacy and difficulty ; as it has 
been my fortune, or as others may think, my misfortune, to 
differ from him so often and so widely, — sometimes as to 
conclusions and ends, but far more frequently as to the means 
of reaching those conclusions and of advancing those ends. 
I am glad to remember, however, that everything of personal 
alienation and estrangement had long ago ceased between us, 
and that no one has been more ready than myself, for many 
years past, to welcome him into this Society. His praises 
will be abundantly and far more fitly spoken elsewhere, by 
some of the friends to. whom he was so dear, and you will all 
pardon me, I know, if the suddenness of the announcement 
has prevented me from paying a more adequate tribute to 
his culture, his accomplishments, his virtues, and to those 
commanding qualities by which he impressed himself on the 
period in which he lived. 

These remarks appeared in a Boston paper of the 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 285 

same evening, and the next morning he received the 
following note : — 

Amesbury, 12 3™°, 1874. 

My dear Friend, — As a lifelong friend of Charles Sum- 
ner, I cannot resist the desire to thank thee for thy generous 
and beautiful tribute to his memory before the Historical 
Society. I have read it with more satisfaction than any 
other notice of the sad event. 

I may mention here that when I expressed to Mr. S. my 

regret that he had used some expressions in a letter to thee 

which I thought unwarranted, he assured me that he had the 

highest personal respect for thee, and only dissented from 

thy views on the question at issue. Believe me very truly, 

Always thy friend, 

John G. Whittier. 
Robert C. Winthrop. 

A few days later a friend showed him a private letter 
from our late associate, Peleg W. Chandler, containing 
the following passage : — 

[March 15, 1874.] " It strikes me that of all the eulogies 
that have been pronounced upon Sumner, the remarks of 
Winthrop are quite superior. For dignity, manliness, and a 
certain simplicity, they are very marked. I well remember 
the time when there was great personal bitterness between 
them, and, though an intimate friend of Sumner, I thought 
that Winthrop had just cause for resentment. I was then on 
very intimate terms with Sumner, seeing him every day, but 
in the attempt to defeat Winthrop's re-election to Congress, 
I did all I could in behalf of the latter, although I hardly 
knew him personally. This contested election broke up a 
great harmony that had existed among the denizens of No. 4 
Court Street, although my own personal relations with Sum- 
ner have always been pleasant. There are certain parts of 
his character which I think I knew as well as any man liv- 



2S6 A MEMOIR OF 



ing. He was a hard opponent, unsparing and even cruel. 
Knowing what I do know, it struck me that Winthrop's 
brief mention of the dead Senator was very fine. It revealed 
to me an elevated plane in his own character, of which I was 
not before aware. There is one thing that must be said of 
Winthrop as well as of Sumner. The latter, I know, was 
very sensitive to the criticisms of the newspapers, and even 
to the stabs that were evidently malicious and false. The 
same is true, I fancy, in regard to the former; but I never 
could see that either of them swerved a hair's breadth from 
what they conceived to be right, on account of such 
criticisms.'' 

[March 17.] I had [wrote Mr. Winthrop] so little time to 
think over what it would be fitting to me to say of Sumner 
that I had some misgivings as to the effect I should produce. 
My views of his political course are so well known that I did 
not wish to appear insincere by praising him too much, nor, 
on the other hand, to have it said that our old antagonism 
had resulted in my saying too little. I seem to have hit a 
golden mean, as I have had cordial letters of thanks from 
Whittier and other friends of his, while the newspapers have 
been very complimentary, particularly the New York 'Tri- 
bune ' of yesterday, a quarter in which, as you know, I am 
not accustomed to look for commendation. At the Faneuil 
Hall meeting, Joshua B. Smith, the colored caterer, paid a 
touching tribute to Sumner which was really the gem of the 
occasion. As I sat, by invitation, on the platform, wedged 
in between William Lloyd Garrison and Henry Wilson, a 
certain sense of the ludicrous came over me, — we seemed 
such a queer trio. In the conversation we had together, before 
the exercises began, my distinguished neighbors were by no 
means indisposed to qualify their admiration of the departed, 
but as I was yesterday one of his pall-bearers, I think it 
hardly becoming to repeat what was said. 

[March 29.] I sometimes question whether the cause of 
religion is advanced when clergymen, from a pulpit on a 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP 287 

Sunday, single out for especial admiration statesmen in no 
way identified with religious observances ; and I have been 
led into this train of thought by the fact that my own rector, 
in the course of a fine sermon this morning, took occasion to 
pay a brief but glowing tribute to Sumner, who, according to 
Henry Wilson, had not been inside of a church for twelve 
years past, unless to attend a wedding or a funeral. He 
spoke of him, moreover, as one who was ' a friend to freedom 
when others were its enemies,' and as ' hating slavery when 
others loved it.' Precisely what was meant by this allusion 
to ' others ' is not quite clear, but it was interpreted by some 
of the congregation as referring to the party with which 
Sumner was originally associated. If so, I do not think it 
fair. The great Whig party loved freedom and hated slavery 
as much as he, though they could not adopt his mode of 
showing their love and hate. It is a perversion of histori- 
cal truth to stigmatize that party as having been, in any 
sense, a proslavery party. Even the great leader of the 
Southern Whigs, Henry Clay, can never be so designated 
without the most reckless disregard of his career and char- 
acter. We did what we could to keep the peace between 
North and South, hoping that a day would one day be opened, 
in the good providence of God, for gradual emancipation on 
some basis which would be safe for both blacks and whites. 
Emancipation came as a necessity of the Civil War which 
we had sought to avert. Perhaps it could have come in no 
other way, but we had always looked to the ultimate disap- 
pearance of slavery under the influences of civilization and 
Christianity, without endangering the Union or sacrificing 
half a million of lives. No one will deny or doubt, I think, 
that if domestic slavery could have been extinguished in the 
United States by a great voluntary act of emancipation and 
philanthropy, it would have had a grandeur and a glory 
which can never attach to its forcible extinction as an act 
of war. 



V 



288 A MEMOIR OF 

Early in May Mr. Wintlirop went to Europe, intend- 
ing to return before the end of the year ; but the health 
of two members of his family rendered this undesirable, 
and he did not reach home until the autumn of 1875. 
Among the pleasant incidents of this, his fourth sojourn 
in foreign countries, was the bestowal upon him of the 
degree of doctor of laws at the Cambridge Commence- 
ment of June, 1874, — a degree many years before 
awarded him by various institutions of learning, but 
which he was gratified now to receive from a famous 
English University, with which, in the remote past, 
some members of his family had been associated. 1 
His stay abroad resulted in his being obliged to decline 
an invitation from the town of Lexington to deliver 
the oration at its centennial celebration of the 19th of 
April, 1775, and an invitation from the Bunker Hill 
Monument Association to perform a similar duty at 
the centennial celebration of the battle of Bunker 
Hill. He was able to accept, however, an invitation 
from the city of Boston to be the orator of the day 
at its centennial celebration of the Declaration of In- 
dependence, July 4, 1876. 2 This occasion gave rise to a 
formidable array of patriotic addresses throughout the 
country ; and an examination of the leading newspapers 
of that period shows that what were considered the 
three principal ones were those delivered by William 

1 His third volume of Addresses contains the remarks made by him 
at the Vice-Chancellor's banquet on this occasion, and in the thirteenth 
volume of the first series of this Society's Proceedings will be found a 
number of letters, or parts of letters, written by him during this absence 
to his friend Charles Deane. 

2 It happened that, although repeatedly invited, he had never before 
delivered a " Fourth of July oration," but he had always said that, if 
alive and well in 1876, he should be glad to do so in Boston. 



ROBERT C. WINTIIROP. 289 

M. Evarts in Philadelphia, by Charles Francis Adams 
in Taunton, and by Mr. Winthrop in Boston. Setting 
aside any notices which might be thought to have been 
in some degree due to local pride or personal friendship, 
the popular verdict would appear to have been that the 
last-named production, though the longest, excelled the 
others in a certain breeziness, so to speak, and in the 
sustained interest imparted to a hackneyed subject. I 
quote only a few closing paragraphs : — 

Our fathers were no propagandists of republican institu- 
tions in the abstract. Their own adoption of the republican 
form was, at the moment, almost as much a matter of chance 
as of choice, of necessity as of preference. The Thirteen 
Colonies had, happily, been too long accustomed to manage 
their own affairs, and were too wisely jealous of each other, 
also, to admit for an instant any idea of centralization ; and 
without centralization a monarchy, or any other form of arbi- 
trary government, was out of the question. Union was then, 
as it is now, the only safety for liberty ; but it could be only a 
Constitutional Union, a limited and restricted Union, founded 
on compromises and mutual concessions ; a Union recognizing 
a large measure of State rights, — resting not only on the 
division of powers among legislative and executive depart- 
ments, but resting also on the distribution of powers between 
the States and the Nation, both deriving their original authority 
from the people, and exercising that authority for the people. 
This was the system contemplated by the Declaration of 1776. 
This was the system approximated to by the Confederation of 
1778-81. This was the system finally consummated by the 
Constitution of 1787. And under this system our great ex- 
ample of self-government has been held up before the nations, 
fulfilling, so far as it has fulfilled it, that lofty mission which 
is recognized to-day as « Liberty enlightening the World.' 
Let me not speak of that example in any vainglorious spirit. 

19 



290 A MEMOIR OF 

Let me not seem to arrogate for my country anything of supe- 
rior wisdom or virtue. Who will pretend that we have always 
made the most of our independence, or the best of our liberty ? 
Who will maintain that we have always exhibited the brightest 
side of our institutions, or always intrusted their administra- 
tion to the wisest or worthiest men ? Who will deny that we 
have sometimes taught the world what to avoid, as well as 
what to imitate ; and that the cause of freedom and reform 
has sometimes been discouraged and put back by our short- 
comings, or by our excesses ? Our Light has been, at best, 
but a Revolving Light ; warning by its darker intervals or its 
sombre shades, as well as cheering by its flashes of brilliancy, 
or by the clear lustre of its steadier shining. Yet, in spite of 
all its imperfections and irregularities, to no other earthly light 
have so many eyes been turned ; from no other earthly illu- 
mination have so many hearts drawn hope and courage. It 
has breasted the tides of sectional and of party strife. It has 
stood the shock of foreign and of civil war. It will still hold 
on, erect and unextinguished, defying the ' returning wave ' 
of demoralization and corruption. Millions of young hearts, 
in all quarters of our land, are awaking at this moment to the 
responsibility which rests peculiarly upon them, for rendering 
its radiance purer and brighter and more constant. Millions 
of young hearts are resolving, at this hour, that it shall not be 
their fault if it do not stand for a century to come, as it has 
stood for a century past, a Beacon of Liberty to mankind ! . . . 

We come then, to-day, with hearts full of gratitude to God 
and man, to pass down our country and its institutions, — 
not wholly without scars and blemishes upon their front, — not 
without shadows on the past or clouds on the future, — but 
freed forever from at least one great stain, and firmly rooted in 
the love and loyalty of a United People, — to the generations 
which are to succeed us. And what shall we say to those 
succeeding generations, as we commit the sacred trust to their 
keeping and guardianship ? 

If I could hope, without presumption, that any humble 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 291 

counsels of mine, on this hallowed anniversary, could be 
remembered beyond the hour of their utterance, and reach 
the ears of my countrymen in future days ; if I could borrow 
' the masterly pen ' of Jefferson, and produce words which 
should partake of the immortality of those which he wrote 
on tins little desk ; 2 if I could command the matchless tonerue 
of John Adams, when he poured out appeals and arguments 
which moved men from their seats, and settled the destinies 
of a nation ; if I could catch but a single spark of those elec- 
tric fires which Franklin wrested from the skies, and flash 
down a phrase, a word, a thought, along the magic chords 
which stretch across the ocean of the future, — what could I, 
what would I, say ? 

I could not omit, certainly, to reiterate the solemn obliga- 
tions which rest on every citizen of this republic to cherish 
and enforce the great principles of our Colonial and Revolu- 
tionary fathers, — the principles of Liberty and Law, one 
and inseparable, — the principles of the Constitution and the 
Union. 

I could not omit to urge on every man to remember that 
self-government politically can only be successful, if it be 
accompanied by self-government personally ; that there must 
be government somewhere ; and that if the people are indeed 
to be sovereigns, they must exercise their sovereignty over 
themselves individually, as well as over themselves in the 
aggregate, — regulating their own lives, resisting their own 
temptations, subduing their own passions, and voluntarily 
imposing upon themselves some measure of that restraint and 
discipline which, under other sj'stems, is supplied from the 



1 On this occasion Mr. Winthrop had before him the writing-desk of 
Jefferson, the same on which he wrote the Declaration of Independence, 
— a desk subsequently presented to the United States by the children of 
Jefferson's granddaughter, Mrs. Joseph Coolidge of Boston. See the Pro- 
ceedings of Congress for April 23, 1880, with speeches then made by 
Senators and Representatives from Massachusetts and Virginia, together 
with a letter from Mr. Winthrop on the subject. 



292 A MEMOIR OF 

armories of arbitrary power, — the discipline of virtue in the 
place of the discipline of slavery. 

I could not omit to caution them against the corrupting in- 
fluences of intemperance, extravagance, and luxury. I could 
not omit to warn them against political intrigue, as well as 
against personal licentiousness ; and to implore them to regard 
principle and character, rather than mere party allegiance, in 
the choice of men to rule over them. 

I could not omit to call upon them to foster and further the 
cause of universal education ; to give a liberal support to our 
schools and colleges ; to promote the advancement of science 
and art, in all their multiplied divisions and relations ; and to 
encourage and sustain all those noble institutions of charity 
which, in our own land above all others, have given the crown- 
ing grace and glory to modern civilization. 

I could not refrain from pressing upon them a just and 
generous consideration for the interests and the rights of their 
fellow-men everywhere, and an earnest effort to promote peace 
and good-will among the nations of the earth. 

I could not refrain from reminding them of the shame, the 
unspeakable shame and ignominy, which would attach to those 
who should show themselves unable to uphold the glorious 
fabric of self-government which had been founded for them at 
such a cost by their fathers. ' Viclete, videte, ne, ut Mis pulchcr- 
imum fuit tantam vobis imperii gloriam relinquere, sic nobis 
turpissimum sit, Mud quod accepistis, tueri et conservare non 
posse ! ' 

And surely, most surely, I could not fail to invoke them to 
imitate and emulate the examples of virtue and purity and 
patriotism which the great founders of our Colonies and of 
our Nation had so abundantly left them. 

But could I stop there ? Could I hold out to them, as the 
results of a long life of observation and experience, nothing 
but the principles and examples of great men ? 

Who and what are great men ? « Woe to the country,' said 
Metternich to Ticknor, forty years ago, ' whose condition and 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 293 

institutions no longer produce great men to manage its 
affairs.' The Austrian statesman applied his remark to 
England at that day ; but his woe — if it be a woe — would 
have a wider range in our time, and leave hardly any land 
unreached. Certainly we hear it nowadays, at every turn, 
that never before has there been so striking a disproportion 
between supply and demand, as at this moment, the world 
over, in the commodity of great men. 

But who and what are great men ? ' And now stand forth,' 
says an eminent Swiss historian, who had completed a survey 
of the whole history of mankind, at the very moment when, 
as he sa} r s, 'a blaze of freedom is just bursting forth beyond 
the ocean,' — ' and now stand forth, ye gigantic forms, shades 
of the first Chieftains, and Sons of Gods, who glimmer among 
the rocky halls and mountain fortresses of the ancient world ; 
and you, Conquerors of the world from Babylon and from 
Macedonia ; ye Dynasties of Caesars, of Huns, Arabs, Moguls, 
and Tartars ; ye Commanders of the Faithful on the Tigris, 
and Commanders of the Faithful on the Tiber; you hoary 
Counsellors of Kings and Peers of Sovereigns ; Warriors on 
the car of Triumph, covered with scars and crowned with 
laurels ; ye long rows of Consuls and Dictators, famed for 
your lofty minds, your unshaken constancy, your ungovern- 
able spirit, — stand forth and let us survey for a while your 
assembly, like a Council of the Gods ! What were ye ? The 
first among mortals ? Seldom can you claim that title ! The 
best of men? Still fewer of you have deserved such praise! 
Were ye the compellers, the instigators of the human race, 
the prime movers of all their works ? Rather let us say that 
you were the instruments, that you were the wheels by whose 
means the Invisible Being has conducted the incomprehen- 
sible fabric of universal government across the ocean of 
time ! ' 

Instruments and wheels of the Invisible Governor of the 
Universe! This is indeed all which the greatest of men 
ever have been, or ever can be. No flatteries of courtiers, 



21U A MEMOIR OF 

no adulations of the multitude, no audacity of self-reliance, 
no intoxications of success, no evolutions or developments 
of science, — can make more or other of them. This is ' the 
sea-mark of their utmost sail,' — the goal of their farthest 
run, — the very round and top of their highest soaring. 

Oh, if there could be to-day a deeper and more pervading 
impression of this great truth throughout our land, and a 
more pervading conformity of our thoughts and words and 
acts to the lessons which it involves, — if we could lift our- 
selves to a loftier sense of our relations to the Invisible, — 
if, in surveying our past history, we could catch larger and 
more exalted views of our destinies and our responsibilities, 
— if we could realize that the want of good men may be a 
heavier woe to a land than any want of what the world calls 
great men, — our Centennial Year would not only be signa- 
lized by splendid ceremonials and magnificent commemora- 
tions and gorgeous Expositions, but it would go far towards 
fulfilling something of the grandeur of that 'Acceptable Year' 
which was announced by higher than human lips, and would 
be the auspicious promise and pledge of a glorious second 
century of Independence and Freedom for our country. 

For, if that second century of self-government is to go on 
safely to its close, or is to go on safely and prosperously at 
all, there must be some renewal of that old spirit of subordi- 
nation and obedience to Divine as well as human laws, which 
has been our security in the past. There must be faith in 
something higher and better than ourselves. There must 
be a reverent acknowledgment of an Unseen, but All-seeing, 
All-controlling Ruler of the Universe. His Word, His Day, 
His House, His Worship, must be sacred to our children, as 
they have been to their fathers ; and His blessing must never 
fail to be invoked upon our land and upon our liberties. 
The patriot voice, which cried from the balcony of yonder 
old State House, when the Declaration had been originally 
proclaimed, ' Stability and perpetuity to American Indepen- 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 295 

dence,' did not fail to add, ' God save our American States.' l 
I would prolong that ancestral prayer. And the last phrase 
to pass my lips at this hour, and to take its chance for re- 
membrance or oblivion in years to come, as the conclusion 
of this Centennial Oration, and the sum and summing up of 
all I can say to the present or the future, shall be : — There 
is, there can be, no Independence of God: In Him, as a 
Nation, no less than in Him, as individuals, 'we live, and 
move, and have our being.' God save our American 
States ! 

In the General Election of 1876 he took no part 
except to allow the publication of a short letter to 
Charles Francis Adams, which contained the following 
passage : — 

At a moment when you are the subject of much severe and 
unjust animadversion, I am unwilling to let the election go 
by without saying to you formally what I said in casual 
conversation with you many weeks ago. I am for you and 
with you in all your views of the present condition of public 
affairs, and shall give my vote accordingly for yourself and 
Mr. Til den. 2 I have a great regard for Governor Rice, 

1 The reference is to James Bowdoin, -who, as President of the Coun- 
cil of Massachusetts, promulgated the Declaration of Independence in 
Boston. 

2 Mr. Adams was then actively supporting Tilden for the Presidency 
and had consented to run for Governor of Massachusetts against Alex- 
ander H. Rice, the Republican candidate. Bitter attacks had been made 
upon him, the President of Harvard University, among others, designat- 
ing the opponents of the Republican party as " rebels and copperheads," 
while Mr. Blaine arraigned three generations of a historic family in a 
savage but entertaining indictment. According to him, not only had 
old John Adams, "the best of the three," ruined the Federalist party 
and then passed the latter part of his life in "querulous attempts to 
throw the responsibility on Hamilton ; " but John Quincy Adams had 
completely wrecked the great party of Monroe, and would be chiefly 
remembered " as the author of a diarv conspicuous for its malignity, and 
father of a son unwise enough to publish it." " No Adams," added Mr. 



296 A MEMOIR OF 

and entire confidence in the purity and patriotism of Mr. 
Hayes. But I hold with you, that the best hope, if not the 
only hope, of putting a stop to corruption at Washington, 
and of restoring peace and harmony at the South, is in a 
thorough chanere of the National Administration. I have 
no fear that such a change will endanger the great issues of 
the late war, much less that it will disturb our national credit 
at home or abroad. Such suggestions seem to me only the 
desperate resort of a party clinging to power. The whole 
idea that our elections are to turn on the probable price of 
American securities in foreign markets is humiliating. 

Mr. Webster had then been in his grave four and twenty 
years, and the hostility of- a few of his followers to Mr. 
Winthrop had long since become a thing of the past. 
A bronze statue of the former, the gift of a wealthy 
New York merchant, was about to be unveiled in Cen- 
tral Park by Mr. Evarts, who represented New York 
and the donor; while Mr. Winthrop, by common con- 
sent, went on to represent Boston and the associates 
of Webster. His short address on this occasion (Nov. 
25, 1876), appreciative but discriminating, was con- 
sidered worthy of the career and character of its great 
subject, and should be read in connection with a paper 
by the same author entitled " Webster's Keply to 
Hayne, and his General Methods of Preparation." 1 



Blaine, " ever headed a party without taking the life out of it. The Re- 
publican party can be beaten in 1876 and still have a future ; but with 
Charles Francis Adams for a candidate, it would never have breathed 

again." 

1 The greater part of this paper was written in 1877, but a pressure 
of encasements caused it to be laid aside and it was not finished until 
the year before Mr. Winthrop died. It first appeared in " Scribner's 
Magazine " for January, 1894, where it attracted marked attention. 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 297 

[Jan. 31, 1877.] Moody and Sankeyare in full blast here, 
and I hope they will do good. We need revivals (in their 
best sense) everywhere. I wish I could have been a Wesley, 
or a Whitefield even, sed non cuivis adire Corintho. And if 
one begins to wish, why not wish to be a Paul outright ! I 
only meant to imply the deep sense I have of the grandeur 
and glory of talents devoted to Evangelical work. It was 
one of my ambitions to compose a hymn worthy of a place in 
a church collection, but I never could satisfy myself. Watts, 
Cowper, and Wesley will live longer on the tongues of men 
by their hymns than Longfellow, Holmes, or Whittier by 
any of their productions. Such music used to have a special 
charm for me. I recall it at least sixty years ago when I was 
a school-boy, and when six or seven sisters and brothers used 
to gather around the piano, while my father and mother sat 
listening to such grand old tunes as Hotham and Denmark 
and Cheshunt. It was the 'Lock Hospital Collection' of 
tunes on which I was brought up, and our favorite hymns 
were ' Jesus, Lover of my soul,' ' Our Lord has risen from 
the dead,' and ' Before Jehovah's awful throne.' The mem- 
ory of these and other hymns often comes over me on a 
Sunday night, and brings back a family group — of which I 
was the youngest, and am now the only survivor — as vividly 
as I hope one day to see it above. 

[Newport, Aug. 24, 1877.] William Beach Lawrence told 
me to-day that Sumner told him, in 1872, that the Coalition 
should have nominated him (Sumner) for President instead of 
Greeley, and that he could have carried the election ! I have 
some doubt about the entire accuracy of this, as Lawrence does 
not seem to me the sort of person in whom Sumner would have 
been likely to confide freely. This reminds me of a long talk 
I had with Thurlow Weed in New York last May, when, in 
reviewing the past, he told me some queer things about dif- 
ferent people, some of which I should hardly care to repeat. 
He added that Evarts had told him that Hayes would 
have liked to offer me the mission to England, but that my 



998 A MEMOIR OF 

published letter to Mr. Adams made this out of the question. 
I have nothing to regret in that letter, nor could I, in any 
case, have accepted the post, as my health is altogether too 
uncertain and unsatisfactory. I manage to get through a 
good deal of work, and can pull myself together for a great 
occasion, but I feel wretchedly much of the time, and have 
had some warnings which make me think I am not long for 
this world. Aside from this, I prefer that the high opinion I 
have formed of President Hayes should seem unbiassed by 
any personal considerations. 

Among his utterances of this and the following year 
may be alluded to in passing a speech when presiding at 
the Festival of the Boston Latin School (Nov. 15, 1877), 
another at the Harvard Alumni dinner of June 26, 1878, 
the fiftieth anniversary of his own class, — when he was 
accompanied by his kinsman, Lord Dufferin, then Gov- 
ernor-General of Canada, who was on a visit to him at 
Brookline, — and a third at the Salem celebration of 
Sept. 18, 1878, when Dean Stanley was his guest. 
Among the many invitations which from time to time 
he had been compelled to decline, was one to deliver the 
address at the unveiling of the statue of Henry Clay, 
at Louisville, in the spring of 1867. He had always 
regretted having been unable to do this, and in 1879 
he willingly complied with a request from the New 
England Historic Genealogical Society to prepare a 
memoir of Clay for the first volume of their " Memorial 
Biographies." This memoir, which was separately 
printed in pamphlet form, is also to be found in his 
own fourth volume, and has probably been as much 
read and as much praised as anything he ever wrote, 
though it does not pretend to be more than a compre- 



ROBERT C. WIXTHROP. 299 

hensive sketch of a very remarkable career. In Octo- 
ber of the same year he retired from Presidency of the 
Boston Provident Association after twenty-five years' 
service, during which, to use the recorded language of 
our lamented associate, Hon. Francis E. Parker: — 

" Mr. Winthrop has been the head of this Association, not in 
name only, but in fact. He brought to us not only the respect 
due to eminent national services and an honored name, but 
the power of organization and skill in administration which 
were natural to his character, and had been matured by expe- 
rience of weighty and conspicuous public affairs. His con- 
stant and punctual presence at our meetings has added both 
despatch and dignity to the transaction of our business. His 
name has brought to us the most important of the legacies 
which we have received ; and it is within bounds to say that, 
for the generous endowment of our Association, including the 
large reversionary interest in Mr. Eastburn's estate, we are as 
much indebted to him as if it had been his direct gift. It is 
to his influence and exertion, more than to any one cause, that 
the public owes the ample and commodious building which, 
as a general Bureau of Charity, now shelters many of the prin- 
cipal Associations of Boston. As the first Chairman of the 
Overseers of the Poor, under the new organization, he did 
more than any other person to shape that important charity, 
and to bring it into harmony with our own." 1 

[Washington, April 25, 1880.] My annual visit to the 
capital is always pleasant. People are very kind, and grow 
more and more to regard me as a sort of link with the past. 
I sat some time yesterday with Alexander H. Stephens, at the 
National Hotel, in the room in which Clay died, and in which 
Stephens says he expects to die ere long. He is feeble, but 

1 Annual Report of the Boston Provident Association, October, 1870, 
which also contains a warm tribute to Mr. Winthrop's services from the 
Senior Vice-President of the Association, another valued member of this 
Society, the late Rev. Dr. Samuel Kirkland Lothrop. 



300 A MEMOIR OF 

impulsive as ever, telling me, among other things, that when 
he recently urged Hancock for the Presidency, he was told 
the latter had not money enough, and that he now thought he 
should go for Grant ! Money or not, I certainly prefer Han- 
cock to Tilden, all things considered. Mrs. President Hayes 
has driven me to Rock Creek Church, which I had never seen 
before. It was built in 1719, repaired in 1775, and had quite 
a look of Old England. The sexton, a character in his way, 
informed me that before entering on his present functions he 
had been successively in the service of Dr. Pusey, George 
Grote, and Fanny Ellsler, a curious juxtaposition of celebrities. 
What you say of parts of J. Q. A.'s diary is substantially true. 
He undoubtedly kept gall and wormwood in his inkstand for 
daily use, but he was a charming old man all the same. He 
fulfilled the character which he gave to Roger Williams, — 
' that conscientious, contentious man.' It is a great gratifica- 
tion to me to have procured the restoration and proper care of 
Ary Scheff er's Lafayette in the Capitol. General Garfield has 
been most obliging in the matter. This portrait, and the one 
of John Hampden in the White House, ought never to have 
been allowed to reach such a stage of neglect as that in which I 
have successively found them. Another great satisfaction to 
me has been in co-operating with others to secure the erection 
of some sort of monument to our old friend Joe Gales. 1 

A characteristic instance of Mr. Winthrop's readiness, 
at the age of more than threescore and ten, was exhib- 
ited in the following month, at the centennial celebra- 
tion of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 
in the Old South Church, Boston, May 26, 1880, when 
the appointed orator was Charles Francis Adams, 
who was taken ill the day before, and whose manu- 

1 Joseph Gales, for nearly half a century editor of the " National 
Intelligencer," and a great favorite of all the prominent men of the Whig 
party, had died in Washington in 1860. 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 301 

script could not be found. As invited guests had 
arrived from different parts of the country, and even 
from Europe, an appeal was made to Mr. Winthrop to 
come to the rescue, and though he had less than twenty- 
four hours' notice, he managed to prepare an instructive 
and commemorative address, forty minutes long, besides 
presiding at the banquet and introducing the speakers. 

[July 24, 1880.] I to-day mailed Justin Winsor my prom- 
ised chapter for his ' Memorial History of Boston.' It is not 
what I would but what I could, having been written under 
all sorts of distractions and adverse influences. Intended to 
be a sketch of the early history of Massachusetts, I should 
rather call it a skeleton ; but, such as it is, it has been a labor 
of love and may answer its purpose. I have begun a paper on 
the relations of the Massachusetts Puritans to the Church of 
England, which I hope some day to read to the Historical 
Society. 

Two months later he wrote for publication to the 
editor of the Boston "Post," as follows: — 

[Brookline, Sept. 30, 1880.] I am sorry to see my name at 
the head of the list of Vice-Presidents of the Democratic meet- 
ing last night. I am duly sensible of the compliment, but it 
was without my consent. For many years past I have been 
altogether an independent voter. During this period I have 
repeatedly supported Democratic candidates, and I am quite 
likely to do so again ; but I have sometimes voted the Repub- 
lican ticket, and prefer to remain unconnected with any party 
organization. 

I have, however, nothing to conceal, and this occasion 
obliges me to say frankly that I am opposed to-day, as I al- 
ways have been, to any concerted array of solid Norths against 
solid Souths. These sectional antagonisms and contentions 
are worthy of all reprobation ; and never more so than when 



302 A MEMOIR OF 

fomented and kept alive, on the one side or on the other, for 
the purpose of prolonging party power. They brought on the 
war; and they still interfere with the best fruits of peace. 
The condition of the freedmen themselves — their prospects 
of education and their secure enjoyment of all the privileges 
of citizenship — would, in my judgment, be far more hopeful 
if the pressure of a solid North were taken off from the 
Southern States, and if they could cease to feel, whether 
reasonably or unreasonably, that they were under the domin- 
ion of conquerors. This is the great consideration which 
weighs on my own mind, in view of the coming election, and 
which will control my vote. It is not a question of candidates 
or persons. It is not a question of parties or platforms. It 
is not a question whether the decision of the Electoral Com- 
mission, four years ago, was just or unjust. Nor is it, with me, 
any question as to the administration of President Hayes, 
which has been so generally acceptable. But my vote will 
be influenced solely by the desire to help in breaking up the 
intense sectionalism which has so long prevailed in our land. 
I long to see the Southern people once more divided into 
parties, as they were when I was in active public life, — not 
by caste, or color, or sympathy with a lost cause, but accord- 
ing to their honest judgment of what is best for the whole 
country. But the North must concur, and even lead the 
way in this patriotic obliteration of sectional prejudices, or 
it will fail to be accomplished. Let me only add, that I am 
not one of those who foresee dangers to our institutions, or 
to the general prosperity of the country, in the success of the 
Democratic party. Nor, in view of the great uncertainties of 
the result, does it seem wise to create a panic in advance by 
exaggerated partisan predictions. In my opinion, there has 
never been a moment since the war ended when it would 
have been safer to intrust the government to such a man as 
General Hancock, with the assurance that it would be admin- 
istered upon principles as broad as the Constitution and 
as comprehensive as the Union. 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 303 

[Nov. 17, 1880.] I took no very active part in the recent 
General Convention of our Church in New York. Since 
Dr. Barnas Sears's death a large burden of the business of the 
Peabody Trust has fallen upon me and engrossed much of 
my time. I think I may say without vanity that Southern 
schools owe me much. I shall let Dr. Holmes see what you 
think of him. His vivacity, in the derivative, as well as in 
every other sense, is marvellous, and his style, as you say, 
often quite exquisite. I have a notion that no one can reach 
the finest harmonies of style who has not a musical ear. 
Prescott had no music. Ticknor had little or none, Webster 
very little, and Everett none at all. Holmes has an abundance 
of time and tune, and I trace them in his composition. For 
myself, — if I may cite myself in connection with style, — I 
have almost too much ear for music. I often find myself 
stopping my pen to catch the true metre, and I am conscious 
that music enters largely into my literary efforts. Indeed, I 
have frequently brought out a sentence, or a paragraph, or a 
page or more, to a satisfactory conclusion and climax, — after 
it has eluded me for a long time, — under the inspiration of 
one of Beethoven's symphonies, or one of Mozart's sonatas, 
or one of Handel's choruses. Your views and my own of 
Carlyle and Emerson do not differ much. I doubt whether 
the former is an accurate historian, and I do not always get 
an intelligent idea of the latter's drift. His essay on Plato, 
for instance, which I have been lately reading, contains some 
splendid nebulce, but I yearn for more condensed thought. 
Yet he is a most amiable and lovable person, who now and 
then writes very striking things, both in poetry and prose. 
No two men could be more unlike than he and Carlyle, — 
agreeing in little except their admiration for each other, — 
the one a bear, and the other a lamb, in outward demeanor. 
... As to 4 Endymion,' there are clever things in it, as in all 
Disraeli's novels. He is certainly a very remarkable man, 
and I, for one, do not think the worse of him as a statesman 
because he happens to be the self-made son of a Jewish man 



304 A MEMOIR OF 

of letters. Dean Stanley once told me he had read ' Tan- 
cred ' over and over again on account of its admirable de- 
scription of the Holy Land. 

[Feb. 13, 1881.] The quotation you allude to is from 
Matthew xiii. 43. There is nothing more exquisite in Holy 
Writ. Following as it does upon some of the most fearful 
images of future punishment, it gathers fresh beauty from 
the contrast and is like a strain of celestial harmony after 
the most harrowing discords. As the language of Christ 
himself, succeeded by that emphatic warning, ' he that hath 
ears to hear let him hear,' — it cannot be accepted as any 
mere figure of speech. Indeed, I know of nothing in the 
Bible more solemn than the passages which immediately pre- 
cede it. In my opinion the tendency of modern preaching 
is far too much in the direction of explaining away the so- 
lemnities of future judgment. We are soothingly told that 
all these accounts of the punishment of the wicked are figu- 
rative, and a sort of sentimental, intellectual remorse is held 
out as the worst that can befall a sinner hereafter. Yet these 
tremendous verses contain — not a parable — but the decla- 
ration and unfolding of a parable, and that by ' Him that 
spake as never man spake.' I have often thought that those 
clergymen take a fearful responsibility, who so often bid us 
discard all thought about rewards and punishments as the 
basis of goodness, and who virtually declare that in dealing 
so often with these appeals to hope and fear, and in holding 
up so frequently these representations of future weal and 
woe, the Saviour himself was not an example to be followed. 
If old-fashioned Orthodox preachers ' dealt damnation round 
the land ' somewhat too coarsely and indiscriminately, the 
modern pulpit-orators are at least guilty of the opposite ex- 
treme when they strive so hard to explain away everything 
which might be offensive to ears polite. . . . The reported 

conduct of is shocking and lamentable, but every day 

brings its revelations of human frailty and wickedness, and I 
suppose it will be so to the end. What hope, indeed, is there 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 305 

of anything better, when in so many quarters table-tippings 
and ' spiritual ' rappings seem to have taken the place of the 
Lord's Supper and a belief in the Holy Ghost? The idea 
that, after this fitful fever is ended, we may be summoned 
back to gossip about nothing at the beck and call of imper- 
tinent worldlings ! Is this the fulfilment of the declaration 
that ' the Spirit shall return to God who gave it,' and how 
directly is it at war with the Scripture account of Dives, who 
begged in vain that he might be allowed to warn his breth- 
ren ! I had rather take my chance of understanding the 
secrets of the other world by reading one verse of the New 
Testament in a prayerful spirit, than by consulting all the 
mediums that have 'boasted themselves to be somebody,' 
from Swedenborg downwards. . . . Your allusion to Paley's 
sermon on the recognition of friends in another world, re- 
minds me that it was the favorite sermon of my mother, to 
whom I read it on her death-bed in 1825. How many friends 
there will be to be recognized ! Omnes eodem cogimur. Paley, 
like Jeremy Taylor, is out of fashion, but, to my mind, some 
of his short, simple discourses are worth scores of what are 
called great sermons nowadays. 

XII. 

At the close of 1880 Mr. Winthrop had been compli- 
mented by an invitation from both branches of Congress 
to be the orator of the day at Yorktown in Virginia, 
Oct. 19, 1881, at a celebration by the Government of the 
United States of the hundredth anniversary of the Sur- 
render of Cornwallis, when an official deputation from 
France, and other foreign guests, were expected. He 
accepted this appointment with some misgivings, lest, at 
his age, he should fail to be heard in the open air by a 
concourse of people ; but he was encouraged by the great 
success he met with six months latei% in delivering on 

20 



306 A MEMOIR OF 

Bunker Hill, June 17, 1881, a commemorative address 
at the unveiling of the statue of Colonel William Pres- 
cott. Making all proper allowance for our national 
tendency to exaggeration and jubilation, there can be no 
doubt that this Yorktown celebration was, in its princi- 
pal features, a great success, and Mr. Winthrop's oration 
was characterized by the best critics not merely as a 
masterpiece of historical portraiture, but as conceived in 
the kindest spirit towards Great Britain. 1 In the little 
volume of tributes to him by members of this Society, 
our late associate, Hamilton A. Hill, has given a graphic 
description of the scene, while the well-known English 
correspondent, Archibald Forbes, who had never met Mr. 
Winthrop before, wrote appreciatively of his " strong, 
clear, sustained, and sympathetic voice," his " fine, ner- 
vous face," and " the absorbed attention in which he 
held his hearers." I quote a single passage : — 

It was strikingly said by a great moral and religious writer 
of the mother country in the last century, in relation to his 
own land, that ' between the period of national honor and 
complete degeneracy there is usually an interval of national 
vanity, during which examples of virtue are recounted and 
admired, without being imitated.' Let us beware lest we 
should be approaching such an interval in our own history ! 
No one will deny that there is enough of recounting the great 
examples of virtue and valor and patriotism which have 
been left us by our fathers. Voices of admiration and eulogy 

i Its length may surprise some readers, but it was his custom, in the 
discharge of such duties, to omit parts in delivery. Before making a 
political speech he thought over what he wished to say, relied much 
on the inspiration of the moment, writing it out afterward for publica- 
tion, if he had time. In his commemorative addresses he pursued an 
opposite course, preparing his material carefully in advance, using in 
delivery as much as seemed desirable, but printing the whole. 



ROBERT C. TVTNTHROP. 307 

resound throughout the land. Statues and monuments and 
obelisks are rising at every corner. There can hardly be too 
many of them. But vice and crime, speculation and embez- 
zlement, corruption, profligacy, — and even assassination, 
alas ! — stalk our streets and stare up at such memorials unre- 
buked and unabashed. And are there not symptoms of 
malarias, in some of our high places, more pestilent than any 
that ever emanated from Potomac or even Pontine marshes, 
infecting our whole civil service, and tainting the very life- 
blood of the nation ? Let me not exaggerate our dangers, 
or dash the full joy of this anniversary by suggesting too 
strongly that there may be poison in our cup. But I must 
be pardoned, as one of a past generation, for dealing with 
old-fashioned counsels in old-fashioned phrases. Profound 
dissertations on the nature of government, metaphysical 
speculations on the true theory of civil liberty, scientific dis- 
sections of the machinery of our own political system — even 
were I capable of them — would be as inappropriate as they 
would be worthless. Our reliance for the preservation of 
Republican liberty can only be on the common-place princi- 
ples, and common-place maxims, which lie within the com- 
prehension of the children in our schools, or of the simplest 
and least cultured man or woman who wields a hammer or 
who plies a needle. The fear of the Lord must still and ever 
be the beginning of our wisdom, and obedience to His com- 
mandments the rule of our lives. Crime must not go unpun- 
ished, and vice must be stigmatized and rebuked as vice. 
Human life must be held sacred, and lawless violence and 
bloodshed cease to be regarded as a redress or remedy for 
anything. It is not by murdering Emperors or Presidents 
that the welfare of mankind or the liberty of the people is to 
be promoted. Such acts ought to be as execrable in the sight 
of man as they are in the sight of God. 1 The rights of the 

1 The Emperor of Russia (Alexander II.) and the President of the 
United States (James A. Garfield) had both been assassinated in that 
year. 



308 A MEMOIR OF 

humblest, as well as of the highest, must be respected and 
enforced. Labor, in all its departments, must be justly re- 
munerated and elevated, and the true dignity of labor recog- 
nized. The poor must be wisely visited and liberally cared 
for, so that mendicity shall not be tempted into mendacity, 
nor want exasperated into crime. The great duties of indi- 
vidual citizenship must be conscientiously discharged. Peace, 
order, and the good old virtues of honesty, charity, temper- 
ance and industry, must be cultivated and reverenced. Pub- 
lic opinion must be refined, purified, strengthened, and 
rendered prevailing and imperative, by the best thoughts and 
best words which the press, the platform, and the pulpit can 
pour forth. . . . 

Tell me not that I am indulging in truisms. I know they 
are truisms ; but they are better — a thousand fold better — 
than Nihilisms, or Communisms, or Fenianisms, or any of the 
other isms which are making such headway in supplanting 
them. No advanced thought, no mystical philosophy, no 
glittering abstractions, no swelling phrases about freedom, — 
not even science, with all its marvellous inventions and dis- 
coveries — can help us much in sustaining this Republic. 
Still less can any godless theories of Creation, or any infidel 
attempts to rule out the Redeemer from his rightful suprem- 
acy in our hearts, afford us any hope of security. That way 
lies despair. Commonplace truths, old familiar teachings, 
the Ten Commandments, the Sermon on the Mount, the 
Farewell Address of Washington, honesty, virtue, patriotism, 
universal education, are what the world most needs in these 
days, and our own part of the world as much as any other 
part. Without these we are lost. With these, and with the 
blessing of God, which is sure to follow them, a second cen- 
tury of our Republic may be confidently looked forward to ; 
and those who shall gather on this field, a hundred years 
hence, shall then exult, as we are now exulting, in the con- 
tinued enjoyment of the free institutions bequeathed to us by 



ROBERT C. WTNTHROP. 309 

our fathers, and in honoring the memory of those who have 
sustained them ! 1 

It was not infrequently the ambition of fugitive slaves 
who had earned money at the North or elsewhere, to 
regularize their position by purchasing free papers of 
their owners, and to procure the manumission of their 
families. Such negotiations necessitated the deposit of 
funds in the hands of some one whose name inspired 
general confidence, and between 1840 and 1860 Mr. 
"Winthrop, at some inconvenience, repeatedly consented 
to be the go-between, and when the case excited his sym- 
pathy, himself contributed, and obtained contributions 
from others, to the sum needed. The result was a 
friendly feeling towards him on the part of several 
prominent colored men in Boston and Washington, to 
whose agency, as he supposed, he owed an exemption 
from the personal attacks habitually made upon Con- 
servative leaders at the political meetings of that race. 
He was therefore a good deal surprised, early in 1882, 
by an allusion to himself in the autobiography of 
Frederick Douglass, then first published. After drawing 
a noteworthy contrast between his first meeting Mr. 

1 Xot the least agreeable, but certainly the most unexpected, of his 
Yorktown experiences was the subsequent action of one hundred and 
sixty leading citizens of Massachusetts, without distinction of party, in 
furnishing a portrait of him for the Speakers' Corridor in the Capitol at 
Washington. For the speeches made in the House of Representatives at 
this presentation (June 27, 1882), and for further references to him in 
the same place, at the presentation of portraits of other Massachusetts 
Speakers (Jan. 19,1888), see the " Congressional Record." The artist 
was Daniel Huntington, who painted an earlier portrait of him, now in 
the Peabody Museum at Cambridge, as well as a later one for this Society, 
which also possesses a bust of him by Dexter, taken soon after his retire- 
ment from Congress. A more effective bust, by Powers (Florence, 1868), 
is in the Library at Harvard. 



310 A MEMOIR OF 

Winthrop, when waiting behind his chair at a dinner in 
1838, soon after his escape from slavery, and their be- 
coming personally acquainted when speakers at Faneuil 
Hall after the fall of Richmond, twenty-seven years 
later, — the author went on to say : — 

"Regiment after regiment, brigade after brigade, had 
passed over Boston Common to endure the perils and hard- 
ships of war, and a word from Robert C. Winthrop would 
have gone far to nerve those young soldiers going forth to 
lay down their lives for the life of the Republic ; but no word 
came until the last quarter of the eleventh hour, when the 
work was nearly done. The time when the Union needed 
him was when the slaveholding rebellion was raising a 
defiant head, not when that head was in the dust and ashes 
of defeat and destruction." 

Having reason to suspect that the writer had been 
the unconscious instrument of the ill-will of persons with 
lighter skins than his own, and assuming that his resi- 
dence in Washington might occasionally lead him to the 
Library of Congress, I invited him to run his eye over 
the table of contents of that one of Mr. Winthrop's 
volumes which deals with the period of the Civil War, 
and then let me know how far he considered himself jus- 
tified in saying what he had. I soon after received a 
courteous expression of regret that he had been misled, 
a regret he forthwith repeated in the newspapers, add- 
ing an explanatory note to a second edition then going 
through the press. 1 

i In the subsequent London edition he changed the whole passage, 
substituting several compliments. I am particular to mention all this 
because I can recall no instance when any white assailant of Mr. 
Winthrop behaved even half so handsomely when a mistake of fact was 
pointed out to him. 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 311 

During the greater part of 1882 Mr. Winthrop was 
again abroad, where he enjoyed himself as before, 
though keenly sensible of the gaps death had made in 
the circle of his foreign friends, missing particularly in 
London Sir Henry Holland, Archdeacon Sinclair, Lord 
Stanhope the historian, Dean Stanley, and the fourth 
Earl of St. Germans, — in Paris Thiers, from whom he 
had experienced much hospitality, and Circourt, with 
whom he had corresponded for more than thirty years. 1 
Among the pleasant incidents of this, his last stay in 
Europe, were a few days passed at the historic Chateau 
of Rochambeau, where he found in his bedroom a por- 
trait of Washington given by the latter to the famous 
marshal of that name, — a breakfast at Chantilly with 
the Due d'Aumale, who showed him many of the rarest 
of his art treasures, — and a renewal of former inter- 
course with Mignet, the venerable French historian, to 
whose memory, it may be remembered, he paid a fin- 
ished tribute at a meeting of this Society in April, 1884. 
Meantime, Congress had taken in hand the completion 
of the National Monument to Washington, which, origi- 
nally conceived on too vast a scale, had been suffered 
to stand unfinished in sight of the Capitol, through 
many years of delay and discouragement. On the loth 
of May, 1884, a Resolution was approved by both 
Houses designating the 22d of February in the follow- 
ing year for its dedication with appropriate ceremonies, 
and naming Mr. Winthrop the orator of the day, an 
appointment he felt much hesitation in accepting, but 

1 Count Adolphe de Circourt, one of the most accomplished scholars 
of his time, for some account of whom see the seventeenth volume of the 
" Proceedings r ' of this Society, of which he was an honorary member. 



y 



312 A MEMOIR OF 

it was represented to him by leading members of the 
Congressional Commission that the interest of the occa- 
sion would be enhanced by his doing so, as, nearly 
thirty-seven years before, he had officiated in a similar 
capacity at the laying of the corner-stone. 

[Boston, June 1, 1884.] You may be interested to learn 
that, at a Woman Suffrage meeting here some days ago, I 
was incidentally denounced as having in my political career 
' derided and defied the moral sense of Massachusetts.' I have 
not the smallest wish ever to be made the subject of a cum- 
brous biography, but it would be a satisfaction to me to have 
clearly set forth hereafter, — in a way to save students of 
political history the trouble of wading through thick volumes 
of debates, — precisely in what manner, and exactly in what 
language, I so derided and defied the moral sense of Massa- 
chusetts. I make no pretension to have been infallible, and 
I dare say I made as many mistakes as my neighbors, but, 
on the whole, I am satisfied with my record and would not 
change it. Bancroft 1 has been urging me to write out remi- 
niscences of public men since 1832, paying me the compliment 
of styling' me a ' dispassionate and just judge of men and 
parties.' If I were as vigorous at seventy-five as he is at 
eighty-four, I might try to find time for something of the 
sort, though such reminiscences would have to be carefully 
edited to be palatable to some of my friends, himself among 
the number. Of some amusing experiences in early Whig 
politics, I was reminded at Lenox last autumn by Julius 
Rockwell, with whom I passed a most agreeable hour. In 
discussing more recent events, I was struck by the justice of 
his concluding remark. ' It is,' said he, ' no credit to the 
civilization of the nineteenth century that slavery could not 
have been abolished without that horrid war.' Have you 
read Bacourt's letters ? 2 It seems he calls Kennedy and me, 

1 George Bancroft, the historian. 

2 Bacourt, a protege" of Talleyrand, was French minister to the 



EOBERT C. WINTHROP. 313 

in 1841, 'les deux hommes les plus comme il faut de cet 
e'trange monde Aniericain ' ; but, as a rule, he is severe and 
vituperative to a degree I should not have expected. I quite 
agree to what you say of Matthew Arnold. I found him 
pleasant enough at table, but there is a flippant tone about 
his writings, — an assumption of superior insight, to say 
nothing of want of faith, — which renders them distasteful 
to me. I cannot find that speech you ask for, though, in 
searching for it, I came across the manuscripts of two for- 
gotten lectures of mine, — one, in Boston in 1834, on the 
Elective Franchise, the other, in Beverly in 1838, on the 
Elevation and Dignity of Labor. The former proved to 
contain not a few of the Civil Service views of the present 
hour, and the latter had some grains of wheat amidst the 
chaff; but neither seemed worth keeping, and I destroyed 
them. 

During the summer and autumn of 1884 he was at 
times a good deal out of health, but managed to fulfil 
engagements in New York and elsewhere, besides sub- 
stantially finishing his monument oration. Rarely pru- 
dent in the matter of fatigue and exposure, he had a 
theory that he did not take cold as readily as other 
people, and that his colds never amounted to much ; 
but, as ill luck would have it, he suddenly developed one 
on the 10th of December, which was followed by pneu- 
monia and threatened to prove fatal. For more than a 
fortnight he hovered between life and death, though his 
mind continued clear, and on one occasion, w T hen sup- 
posed to be in extremis, his particular friend, Phillips 
Brooks, then Rector of Trinity, afterward Bishop of 
Massachusetts, offered at his bedside the prayer for a 

United States in the early years of Mr. "Winthrop's Congressional life, 
but the letters alluded to were not published till 1882. 



n 



14 A MEMOIR OF 



sick person at the point of departure. As he left the 
house, Dr. Brooks remarked to me impressively upon 
the beauty of a Christian's death-bed ; but the uncer- 
tainties of life were never more strikingly manifested 
than by the fact that more than eight years later Mr. 
Winthrop officiated as a pall-bearer at the funeral of 
Bishop Brooks, and wrote the Resolutions of the Vestry 
of Trinity on his demise. His recovery, however, was 
so slow and his weakness so great, that it was obvious 
that he would not be able to speak in public in Feb- 
ruary ; and it was arranged that his address, or such 
portions of it as he had intended to deliver, should be 
read for him by some suitable person designated by 
himself. As it was important that the person so desig- 
nated should have time to familiarize himself with the 
production, it became my duty to consult Mr. Winthrop 
on the subject, though he was then barely able to articu- 
late. As the existing Hall of the House of Representa- 
tives, where the exercises were to take place, requires 
an exceptionally practised speaker to make himself 
heard, I foresaw he would be fastidious about a sub- 
stitute, but I was not prepared for the melancholy 
groans which issued from his pillow as I succes- 
sively propounded several of the names obligingly sug- 
gested, though when I reached that of John D. Long, 
formerly Governor of Massachusetts, then a member of 
Congress, and now Secretary of the Navy, he managed 
to utter, " Yes, if he will." Governor Long was neither 
an intimate friend of Mr. Winthrop, nor at all in sym- 
pathy with his political views, but he cheerfully agreed 
to perform this duty, and did so most acceptably. It 
was a bitter disappointment to have been so unex- 



ROBERT C. WLNTHROP. 315 

pectedly prevented from officiating in person on an 
occasion which seemed so appropriate & finale to a long 
oratorical career ; but he was, in a measure, consoled 
by receiving, on the afternoon of the celebration, with 
other complimentary telegrams, the following one, 
signed by both the Senators and all the Representatives 
of the Old Bay State : — 

" Your address to-day was received by the vast audience 
with unbounded admiration and satisfaction. We are proud 
that Massachusetts, by your genius and eloquence, has paid 
this unsurpassed tribute to the fame of Washington." 

[March 15, 1885.] People are very kind and I am quite 
sure I do not deserve half the compliments I get. Whittier, 
for instance, referring to one passage in my address, writes 
that he knows of ' nothing finer in ancient or modern elo- 
quence.' I am afraid this must be regarded as a sort of 
friendly tonic for a convalescent, but while I admit that I 
find it bracing, I am really none too well satisfied with my 
own performance. As some one, whose name I have forgot- 
ten, wrote, 'he who comes up to his own idea of excellence, 
must originally have had a very low standard in his mind.' 
I am gradually resuming my ordinary occupations, and hope 
to crawl on to Washington next month to get rid of our east 
winds ; but after so prolonged an illness at so advanced an 
age, it would be idle for me to expect to regain any full 
measure of former activity, and I have arranged to retire 
from some public duties, — in particular, from the presidency 
of the Massachusetts Historical Society, which I have now 
held for thirty years. 

This long tenure of office had been illustrated, at the 
outset, by increased attendance at and interest in our 
monthly meetings, and, in its progress, by very material 
additions to our pecuniary resources and by the publi- 



316 A MEMOIR OF 

cation of no less than thirty-nine volumes of historical 
material, to many of which he had largely contributed. 1 
The utterances of leading members, both at the time 
of his retirement and of his death, — especially the re- 
marks of his two successors in the chair, 2 and that 
exceptionally competent judge, the Treasurer, 3 — de- 
scribe the value placed upon his services ; but he himself 
fully realized that, while it had been his privilege and his 
pleasure to be foremost in our undertakings, his success 
was largely due to the cordial and zealous co-operation 
of many valued associates, chief of whom should always 
be remembered our late Vice-President, Charles Deane. 
It is, moreover, an open secret that Mr. Winthrop was 
not in accord with the majority of the Society upon the 
most important practical question which came before it 
during his presidency. Originally intended to consist 
of only thirty members, a number increased to sixty a 
few years later, this limit was raised to one hundred in 
1857, a change due, in no inconsiderable degree, to Mr. 
Winthrop's influence. Twenty years later, in 1877, he 
proposed a further increase to one hundred and fifty ; 
but, after an animated debate, his plan was rejected 
by a vote equivalent to two to one, the majority be- 
ing strongly of opinion that the limit of one hundred 
should be a permanent one. His own idea was that, if 
sixty was not too large an outside-number at the close 
of the last century, one hundred and fifty would not 

i Between 1855 and 1885 were issued seventeen volumes of Collections 
and twenty-one volumes of Proceedings, besides a volume of lectures on 
the early history of Massachusetts and a catalogue of the Societj-'s library 
in two volumes. 

2 Dr. George E. Ellis and Charles Francis Adams the younger. 

8 Charles C. Smith. 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 317 

have been immoderate eighty years later, in view of the 
wider field of selection created by the growth of Massa- 
* chusetts, — and that, as considerably more than half of 
our members are habitually debarred from taking any 
active part, by reason of age, health, absence, official 
position, or the engrossing nature of their occupations, 
it would not be unwise to let down the bars and admit, 
from time to time, persons from whom assistance in 
the work of publication might reasonably be expected 
and who are liable to be shut out by the existing ar- 
rangement. Upon this work of publication he consid- 
ered that the Society's wide reputation had rested in the 
past and must rest in the future ; but while he rejoiced 
that an increased income made it possible for us, if we 
saw fit, to employ a salaried editor, he profoundly re- 
gretted that a dearth of volunteers should necessitate a 
change from the ancient method by which this editing 
was done by committees working together for the love of 
history.- A diligent student of all classes of historical 
literature, his preference was for writers who have the 
art to keep their individual prejudices in the back- 
ground, and who seem willing to allow their readers 
to deduce deliberate opinions from an apparently un- 
biassed array of facts. 

History [he wrote in one of his common-place books] is 
no mere rhetorical or sensational narrative, or compound of 
incidents or traditions, caught up at second-hand or at ran- 
dom, to sustain a preconceived theory or a favorite view. 
That only is worthy of the name of history which is founded 
on impartial research and diligent sifting of original records, 

1 For a paper upon this question of membership, submitted to the 
Society after Mr. Winthrop's death, but containing repeated references to 
his views, see 2 Proceedings, vol. x. pp. 315-327. 



318 A MEMOIR OF 

which is composed in the spirit of a judge rather than of an 
advocate, and which ever recognizes and ever obeys the two 
great laws laid down by the matchless Roman orator : Ne 
quid falsi dicere audeat, ne quid veri non audeat. 

Throughout nearly ten years during which his life 
was prolonged after this resignation, he continued to 
attend our meetings as often as he was able, occa- 
sionally contributing a paper, or pronouncing an earnest 
tribute to the memory of some lamented associate. At 
the head of a few institutions he preferred still to 
serve, — among them the Children's Hospital of Boston, 
the prosperity of which he had much at heart ; the 
Massachusetts Bible Society, at the annual meetings of 
which he was in the habit of making a short address ; 
the Peabody Museum at Cambridge, the interests of 
which, in conjunction with his friend, Jeffries Wyman, 
he had done so much to foster in the beginning, and in 
connection with which he ultimately founded a scholar- 
ship ; the Episcopal Theological School at Cambridge, 
his long association with which is pleasantly recalled 
by the attractive dormitory which bears his name ; and 
that great Trust for Southern Education which had 
absorbed so much of his time since 1867, and with ref- 
erence to which he maintained an onerous correspond- 
ence until a few weeks before his death. The subject 
had always interested him. So far back as 1854, in 
response to an invitation to take part in the celebra- 
tion of the fiftieth anniversary of the University of 
South Carolina, he had written : — 

For myself, I cannot but feel that whatever is done 
for public instruction, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, is 
done for the whole country ; and I can hardly rejoice less in 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 319 

the progress and prosperity of a college at Columbia than if 
it were at my own Cambridge. 

At a later period, the suffering and impoverished 
condition of the South in the years immediately succeed- 
ing the Civil War caused him deep anxiety, and believ- 
ing that indiscriminate negro suffrage, under the cir- 
cumstances in which it was forced upon a conquered 
people, was a great wrong, and the corrupt and illegal 
legislation resulting from it a national disgrace, he could 
see but one possible remedy in the future, the diffusion 
of knowledge among all classes, without distinction of 
color. 

Slavery [he said at Yorktown] is but half abolished, eman- 
cipation is but half completed, while millions of freemen 
with votes in their hands are without education. 

All his life in independent circumstances, he was 
never a rich man, which he often regretted, — not 
that he had any wish to increase his personal ex- 
penditure, but because perhaps his greatest pleasure 
w T as to give money to worthy objects. In proportion 
to his moderate income he gave largely, but it would 
have been a real delight to him to have had not merely 
the will but the means to contribute, from time to time, 
important sums to public endowments, among which 
there was none that in his old age appealed to him 
more strongly than institutions of learning in the South- 
ern country. It was, therefore, a very agreeable sur- 
prise when, in recognition of what he had done, or 
tried to do, for Southern education, his name was 
given, in 1886, to the Winthrop Training School for 
Teachers, now the Winthrop Normal and Industrial 



320 A MEMOIR OF 

College of South Carolina, at Rock Hill, near Columbia, 
the corner-stone of the fine new buildings of which was 
laid, with appropriate ceremonies, upon his birthday in 
1894. In the minute of his colleagues of the Peabody 
Trust after his death, — a minute prepared by Joseph 
H. Choate, — occurs the following passage : — 

" It may be said with truth and moderation, that the great 
success of Mr. Peabody's intentions for the amelioration of 
the destitution and sufferings of the Southern people by 
education has been largely due to the ceaseless and vigilant 
devotion of Mr. Winthrop, during these twenty-seven years, 
to the business of the Trust. Not a school was aided but 
after careful consideration of its merits by him. Not a dollar 
was expended without his serious consideration of the utility 
of the outlay in the direction intended by Mr. Peabody. 
His lofty character, his courteous bearing, his uniform kind- 
ness in all his dealings with the Trustees over whom he pre- 
sided, endeared him to each member of the Trust as a warm 
personal friend, and the light which his experience and 
knowledge shed upon every question which arose for delib- 
eration always made the task of his associates an easy one. 
We felt that whatever he approved, after the study and re- 
flection which he insisted upon giving to every measure pro- 
jected, must, of course, be right. It was a very great thing 
for an institution like this to be presided over by such a 
man, who, for a quarter of a century, was willing to give 
to its continual service the best powers with which he was 
endowed." 

In his own mind, however, the successful administra- 
tion of this great Fund was largely due to others : — 
first, to the fact that distinguished men of different 
parties, and from all sections of the Union, readily con- 
sented to serve on the Board; next, that persons of 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 321 

mucli experience in the work of Education rendered 
material aid in other ways ; most of all, to his having 
been so fortunate as to secure at the outset, and for the 
next twelve years, for the all-important post of General 
Agent, a man so wise, zealous, and untiring as that 
eminent Northern educator, Barnas Sears; and last, 
but not least, to his having enlisted, as the fittest succes- 
sor to Dr. Sears, the able and accomplished Southern 
statesman who still holds that position. 1 

[Nov. 10, 1886.] I enjoyed the Harvard Anniversary 
celebration, though not quite so much as its predecessor fifty 
years ago, when I was Chief Marshal. Lowell's oration was 
able, but rather long. Creighton, the delegate from Emman- 
uel College, was very happy at the dinner, where my own 
brief remarks were well enough, though the reporters made 
me say 'Alderman Sidney' for Algernon Sidney, and 
* George Pickering ' for George Ticknor. My fourth vol- 
ume has been well received, and, with its predecessors, tells 
the story of my life. When I compiled the first I intended 
it chiefly for distribution, never dreaming that, at the end of 
five and thirty years, it would still be in occasional demand 
and not infrequently cited. I have always regretted it did 
not occur to me to furnish an index, as I did in the later 
ones. 2 My deafness perceptibly increases, but what disturbs 

1 Hon. J. L. M. Curry, formerly of Alabama, now of Virginia. Dur- 
ing his absence as United States Minister to Spain, many of his duties 
were acceptably discharged by a member of the Board to whom Mr. 
"Winthrop was indebted for much assistance in matters of detail and for 
constant acts of kindness, — Hon. Samuel A. Green, now senior member 
of this Society in order of election, and for a very long period its 
Librarian. 

2 What are habitually styled Mr. Winthrop's " Works " consist of four 
volumes of " Addresses and Speeches," published at intervals between 
1851 and 1886, a smaller volume entitled " Washington, Bowdoin, and 
Franklin," published in 1876, and the two volumes of " Life and Letters 
of John Winthrop," already described. In a separate form are to be met 

21 



s 



322 A MEMOIR OF 

me even more is an occasional failure of memory. The other 
day I caught myself boggling at a quotation from Juvenal 
which I could have sworn I had at my fingers' ends. 1 

[Washington, April 23, 1887.] To-day in talking over 
old times and old friends with Corcoran, 2 who is now in his 
eighty-ninth year, I classified Calhoun as the metaphysical 
statesman, Webster as the judicial statesman, and Clay as 
the practical statesman. This off-hand characterization might 
require to be a little qualified and explained, but they were 
all three great men, and there are none like them in these 
days. The Senate is not what it was forty years ago, and 
the loss is not merely in ability but in dignity. I am not 
sure that in proportion to the population there are more 
blatant mountebanks in this country than of old, but they 
certainly seem to grow more noisy and mischievous year by 
year, and they are by no means confined to one particular 

with various early productions for which he could find no room in his 
first volume, and a few later ones printed after 1886. Few things would 
have gratified him more could he have foreseen that, after his death, a 
distinguished Senator from Massachusetts not of his way of thinking 
upon most public questions (George F. Hoar), would write as follows : 
" No one who has to speak on any important occasion on any subject 
connected with American politics, or with history or literature, should 
fail to consult Mr. Winthrop's four volumes of Addresses and Speeches. 
They are storehouses, not only of original thought, but of apt quotation 
and illustration ; and in his estimates of the character of his contem- 
poraries or of men of former generations, I hardly recall an opinion 
which does not seem to me wise and sound, as well as expressed with 
unequalled grace and eloquence. . . . There is no man left who possesses 
such a store of rich and abundant learning, or such rare oratorical 
powers, or such dignity and grace of personal bearing." 

1 He had been a good deal amused some time before by a paragraph 
which went the rounds of the newspapers, dealing with the decline of a 
taste for Classical Scholarship in New England, asserting, probably 
with exaggeration, that not five persons in Massachusetts then under 
twenty years of age could quote ten lines of Juvenal, and that, in cap- 
ping Latin verse, " old Robert C. Winthrop " was capable of bearing 
down single-handed any thirty young antagonists (not professional in- 
structors) who could be selected from Boston and its neighborhood. 

2 William "VV. Corcoran, the banker. 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 323 

party or section or class. I sometimes feel misgivings as to 
what the upshot will be in the twentieth century, which is . 
now fast approaching. 

[June 21.] Having concocted at odd moments an Ode to 
Queen Victoria on the occasion of her Jubilee, I hesitated 
whether to burn it or privately print it with my name at- 
tached, and was advised to do the latter. It soon found its 
way into the newspapers, bringing me man}- compliments, 
perhaps perfunctory, and to-day an anonymous letter, evi- 
dently from an educated person, who derides my poetry, as 
was perhaps justifiable, but then calls me a ' toady ,' which I 
am unwilling to admit. I acknowledge, however, that in 
my old age I like to say kind things of people when I con- 
scientiously can, but I try to discriminate after a fashion. 

Undismayed by this caustic criticism, in the course 
of the two following years he similarly printed and 
distributed among a limited circle of friends a metrical 
translation of the Dies Irce, a brace of sonnets to George 
Washington on the centennial anniversary of his in- 
auguration as President, and some verses entitled Lux 
Mundi. In an earlier chapter of this memoir is in- 
cluded a specimen of his hymns, and I think it not 
inappropriate to insert here the ode above mentioned, 
dated twenty-seven years later. 

Not as our Empress, do we come to greet thee, 
August Victoria, 
On this auspicious Jubilee : 
Wide as Old England's realms extend, 

O'er earth and sea, — 
Her flag in every clime unfurled, 
Her morning drum-beat compassing the world, — 
Yet here her sway Imperial finds an end, 
In our loved land of Liberty ! 



324 A MEMOIR OF 

Nor is it as our Queen, for us to hail thee, 

Excellent Majesty, 

On this auspicious Jubilee : 

Lone, long ago our patriot fathers broke 

The tie which bound us to a foreign yoke, 

And made us free ; 
Subjects thenceforward of ourselves alone, 
We pay no homage to an earthly throne, — 
Only to God we bend the knee ! 

Still, still, to-day, and here, thou hast a part, 

Illustrious lady, 
In every honest Anglo-Saxon heart, 

Albeit untrained to notes of loyalty : 
As lovers of our old ancestral race, — 
In reverence for the goodness and the grace 

Which lend thy fifty years of Royalty 
A monumental glory on the Historic page, 
Emblazoning them forever as the Victorian Age ; 

For all the virtue, faith, and fortitude, 

The piety and truth, 
Which mark thy noble womanhood, 

As erst thy golden youth, — 
We also would do honor to thy name, 
Joining our distant voices to the loud acclaim 

Which rings o'er earth and sea, 
In attestation of the just renown 
Thy reign has added to the British Crown ! 

Meanwhile no swelling sounds of exultation 
Can banish from our memory, 
On this auspicious Jubilee, 
A saintly figure, standing at thy side, 
The cherished consort of thy power and pride, 



ROBERT C. TYTNTHROP. 325 

Through weary years the subject of thy tears, 

And mourned in every nation, — 
"Whose latest words a wrong to us withstood, 
The friend of peace, — Albert, the Wise and Good ! 

[Nov. 7, 1888.] Harrison's election is conceded, an event 
which I fully expected and quietly predicted. I think highly 
of him and of many others who agree with him, but I regret 
the restoration to power of the Republican party, with all its 
sectional bitterness and boastful assumptions and swollen 
pension-lists. Cleveland is an able man who has done excel- 
lent tilings, but I often find his arguments more ponderous 
than persuasive. In dealing with the Tariff, he seemed to 
me to steer straight for the breakers, treating it as if it were 
a new question of which he was an original expounder. I 
have at last managed to struggle through ' Robert Elsmere,' 
who seems to me a weak, gushing sort of person, though with 
some good qualities. 

It may be gathered from the two preceding sentences 
that the writer was neither a disciple of Richard Cobden, 
nor an admirer of the psychological school of modern 
fiction. He believed not merely in a tariff for revenue, 
but in a moderate degree of protection for domestic 
industries, and several early speeches on this subject 
have continued to be quoted as authorities up to the 
present time. x A prodigious reader, he had little liking 
for novels, often breaking down in the middle of com- 

1 He was thought to have a knack at imparting interest to fiscal ques- 
tions, and since the early portion of this memoir was in type I have 
stumbled on a letter to him, dated Jan. S, 1842. from John H. Clifford, 
who wrote : " I have just read aloud to Albert Fearing a puff of your 
Tariff speech in the New York 'American.' « A beautiful speech, admira- 
ble in matter and in manner, full of new, original, enlarged, liberal, 
American ideas, — condensed, solid, profound, animated, and throughout 
forcibly eloquent.' I believe I have this by heart, for all praise of you 
goes to my heart." 



I 



326 A MEMOIR OF 

paratively recent ones which have attracted marked 
attention, but which impressed him as consisting chiefly 
of wearisome conversations full of what he was fond of 
calling " point — no point." It was a pleasure to him to 
read aloud to members of his family, but he chose, for 
the most part, what used to be known as " standard " 
authors, and some idea of what might be termed the 
archaic character of his literary tastes may be gained 
from the fact that he considered Walter Scott a much 
preferable poet to Robert Browning. He held many 
old-fashioned views upon a variety of subjects, some of 
which were of a character to excite disgust or derision 
in the breast of any self-respecting " advanced-thinker." 
For instance, he believed that the best way to check 
crime lies in the prompt and effective punishment of 
a convicted criminal, and, though a tender-hearted man, 
he not merely approved the death-penalty, but consid- 
ered flogging an admirable corrective to certain classes 
of offences. x He was a total disbeliever in unrestricted 
suffrage, preferring, with his friend Francis Lieber, an 
extensive suffrage, based upon property and education, 
within the gradual reach of all who chose strenuously to 
apply themselves. He realized, however, that in such a 
matter there can be no step backward, and that one might 
as well try to lessen the number of flatulent demagogues 
in our legislative bodies, or of sensational writers in the 
press, or of notoriety-seeking preachers in the pulpit. 

1 He agreed with Charles Sumner in finding much to admire in the 
simplicity and common sense of French legal procedure and the operation 
of the French Code. (See " Life of Sumner," vol. ii. pp. 2S4-287.) He 
did not claim to be an expert on this subject, but it often seemed to him 
that our own criminal laws afford too many loopholes for the escape of 
accused persons, particularly when they are supplied with funds. 



ROBERT C. WIXTHROP. 327 

He believed not only in a well-organized militia, but in 
a standing army large enough to secure the vigorous 
enforcement of the laws. In the abstract, he preferred 
the Republican form of government to any other, but 
the toppling over of a monarchy did not necessarily 
inspire him with unmixed exhilaration; he sometimes 
doubted whether anything would be gained by the 
exchange. To him the name mattered little, the essen- 
tials being, in his judgment, an honest and efficient 
municipal system affording clean streets, good roads, and 
adequate protection to life and property; a trained 
civil, diplomatic, and consular service, safe from the 
ravening greed of party-hacks and office-seekers ; an 
intelligent and systematic effort to ameliorate the con- 
dition of the poorer classes; and a degree of personal 
liberty not allowed to degenerate into license. He was 
not sanguine enough to expect all this anywhere in 
absolute perfection, but to try to approximate it in 
different parts of the world seemed to him wiser and 
more practical than to thrill with what is vaguely termed 
"the enthusiasm of humanity," or to " prate," as John 
Quincy Adams called it, "about the Rights of Man." 
Next to an exalted opinion of himself, the most sustain- 
ing reflection to many a man is the firm belief which 
often accompanies it, not only that everything is going 
on for the best in the best of all possible worlds, but 
that his own country is by all odds the most favored 
spot in the universe and that its institutions should 
be unreservedly envied and imitated by other nations. 
If patriotism is to be ganged by any such spread-eagle 
standard, no amount of special pleading could dis- 
guise that Mr. Winthrop's was below par. Ardently 



328 A MEMOIR OF 

as lie loved liis country, he was far from considering it 
faultless. Preferring it to any other, he thought it not 
improbable that if he had been born and bred in some 
other, he might have liked it equally well. He had a 
very high opinion of the average ability of American 
public men of all parties, and a still higher opinion of 
the capacity and ingenuity of that composite race, the 
American people ; but he sometimes wished they 
would not be so boastful, so credulous, so sensitive to 
the slightest foreign criticism, and so absorbingly agog 
about the doings — or alleged misdoings — of persons 
of title on the other side of the Atlantic. 

In 1778, our former President, Thomas L. Winthrop, 
then a junior at Harvard, acquired in that neighborhood 
the nickname of " English Tom," although up to that 
time he had never been abroad. Forty-six years later, 
in the same college, his son Eobert was dubbed by some 
of his classmates "English Winthrop," although he, 
too, had then never been far away from home. Seventy 
years after the last-named period, toward the close of 
an eloquent, complimentary, but discriminating tribute 
to Mr. Winthrop, after his death, by the present able 
representative of a family in which the latter had been 
personally acquainted with four generations of distin- 
guished men, — Mr. Adams took occasion to express a 
doubt whether so " essentially patrician ' ; a person 
(using that word in its best sense) did not sometimes 
give the impression of being a little out of place here, 
however useful he might make himself; whether he 
would not have been more in his native element in 
England, where he " would have vindicated and justified 
an aristocracy, while in a democracy, even though born 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 329 

and brought up in it, he was never in all respects fully 
at home." * The suggestion is not without force, but it 
is, I think, the force of externals. Thomas L. Winthrop, 
though a most affectionate man at bottom, and one who 
made great pecuniary sacrifices for some of his children, 
was so conspicuous an example of the dignified and 
ceremonious demeanor of the old school, that even 
after his son had been elected to Congress he did not 
venture to sit down in his father's presence uninvited. 2 
It is not, therefore, to be wondered at that he should 
have inherited something of formality and precision, 
and his native reserve, which mellowed in old age, was 
intensified by a shortness of vision which placed him 
at occasional disadvantage and made him sometimes 
appear cold or indifferent. In short, he had a good 
deal of what is traditionally known as "the English 
manner ; " but though much given to hospitality and the 
society of cultivated persons, his tastes were rather those 
of a student than a man of the world. He disliked, 
even with intimates, to sit long over wine ; he avoided 
public dinners whenever he could without giving offence, 
and made excuses for not joining dinner-clubs. 3 Save 
on one occasion when a friend took him to the Derby, 
I doubt if he ever saw a race, or a ball-match, in his life. 

1 Tributes of the Massachusetts Historical Society to Robert C. 
Winthrop, pp. 36-37. 

2 Autres temps, autre* mceur*. Not only did the son's children sit 
down in their father's presence when they felt like it, but they were 
even tempted, I am ashamed to say, upon more than one occasion to 
sit, figuratively speaking, upon him. 

8 The only Club he really fancied (aside, of course, from those of 
college days) was the ancient informal " Wednesday Evening Club of 
1777," composed of a limited number of leading representatives of differ- 
ent professions, the weekly gatherings of which he from time to time 
attended for more than half a century. 



330 A MEMOIR OF 

A more than indifferent horseman, he was so deplorable 
a whist-player that it was fortunate for his family that 
he was principled against any kind of stakes, so bad a 
shot that, at an annual battue on Naushon Island, he 
barely escaped the ignominy of bringing down a tame 
doe which had approached him in a confiding spirit. 
One additional trait would stamp him in the opinion 
of many as thoroughly " un-American " : he never put 
himself in the way of receiving railway-passes, declined 
to make use of the complimentary ones which were 
often sent him, and insisted on travelling at his own 
expense. Worse remains behind. The lip of an " up 
to date" Harvard graduate would curl with passing 
pity for a bigoted old man who actually attached more 
importance to Greek and Latin than to athletic sports, 
who regretted for youths in their teens the sharp transi- 
tion from the discipline of preparatory schools to the 
independence of University life, and did not believe 
them to be, as a rule, the fittest persons to select their 
studies. When authoritatively assured by some of those 
who take a strange delight in continually pointing out 
what a wretched little place, in their opinion, Harvard 
used to be, and how no facilities for obtaining any 
thing like a liberal education existed there, — or, in- 
deed, anywhere in New England, — until within the 
last five and twenty years, he listened with his accus- 
tomed benignity; but in his secret soul there lurked 
an obstinate impression that, between 1818 and 1828, 
he had received hereabouts an amount of good, all- 
round, practical instruction for which he always felt 
grateful, which had been of the greatest service to him 
through life, and which had eventually enabled him to 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 331 

be brought into contact with much younger men with- 
out suffering from too painful a sense of intellectual 
inferiority. He even upheld that system of committing 
to memory strings of names, facts, and dates, now 
lightly esteemed as " memorizing," and he largely attri- 
buted his early success as a public speaker to his having 
been continually drilled, both at the Boston Latin 
School and in college, in learning by heart and reciting 
in public long extracts from ancient and modern speak- 
ers and authors, — believing that he had not only derived 
great benefit from the criticisms received on such occa- 
sions, acquiring at the same time ease in the presence 
of an audience, but that the number and variety of 
the passages thus learned had afforded him much 
assistance in debate, in the way of apt illustration or 
appropriate quotation. 

In the course of a familiar discussion of men and 
things in Washington during a session of Congress 
more than seven and forty years ago, Mr. Seward sen- 
tentiously remarked " Moderation rarely succeeds in 
the world," to which Mr. Winthrop rejoined, " It may 
do better in the next," and he then quoted from 
Wordsworth's Happy Warrior, as the true idea of a 
statesman : — 

"Who, if he rise to station of command, 
Rises by open means, and there will stand 
On honorable terms, or else retire 
And in himself possess his own desire." 

Seward took a long whiff at his cigar and said, after 
a pause, " I see now why Greeley no longer considers 
you a practical politician." Our associate, William 



332 A MEMOIR OF 

Everett, in a clever and appreciative notice of Mr. Win- 
throp 1 — worth reading by any one interested in the 
subject — says : — 

" Moderation, temperance, self-control, the daily restraint, 
whether in body, mind, or spirit of passion and lawless excess, 
or indeed of excess within the law, — the constant, supreme 
and controlling respect for order, — this was the guiding 
principle of his public and private life. He learnt it from his 
studies, from the services of the Episcopal Church, from the 
traditions of his ancestors and the example of his father, from 
the tone and habits of Boston where he was born and brought 
up, from the character of Washington, and those leaders in 
his nation and his college which were daily held up to him 
for imitation, like John Jay and John Thornton Kirkland. 
He knew that eager, fiery, passionate spirits like Gouverneur 
Morris and John Adams, whose memory he loved and hon- 
ored, had brought suffering to their friends and themselves 
by their fondness for extremes and absence of moderation ; 
and he trained the character he inherited to even more tem- 
perance and order. He would love North and South alike ; 
he would balance the sin of war against the sin of slavery ; 
and he would cling, as a paramount duty of that patriotism, 
to that Union which Washington founded and Webster de- 
fended, to the very increase of that which his sainted ances- 
tor had founded in 1643 among the four colonies of New 
England." 

Assenting as Mr. Winthrop would gratefully have 
done to this general characterization, he would, I 
feel certain, have quietly demurred to the idea that 
he had learned any of his habitual moderation from 
" the tone and habits of Boston." The following 
passage from President Dwight's Travels of nearly a 

1 Harvard Graduates Magazine, March, 1895. 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 333 

century ago, more nearly expresses his views on this 
subject : ' — 

" The people of Boston are characteristically distinguished 
by a lively imagination ; an ardor easily kindled ; a sensi- 
bility soon felt and strongly expressed; a character more 
resembling that of the Greeks than of the Romans. They 
admire, where graver people would only approve; detest, 
where cooler minds would only dislike; applaud a per- 
formance, where others would listen in silence ; and hiss, 
where a less susceptible audience would only frown. This 
character renders them sometimes more, sometimes less 
amiable, usually less cautious; and often more exposed to 
future regret. From this cause their language is frequently 
hyperbolical, and their pictures of objects in any way inter- 
esting, highly colored. Hence also, their enterprises are 
sudden, bold, and sometimes rash. The tea shipped to Bos- 
ton by the East India Company was destroyed. At New 
York and Philadelphia, it was stored (i. e. locked up from 
use). From the same source also, both persons and things 
are suddenly, strongly, and universally, applauded or cen- 
sured. Individuals of distinction command a popularity 
which engrosses the public mind, and rises to enthusiasm. 
Their observations, and their efforts, are cited with wonder 
and delight ; and such as do not join in the chorus of ap- 
plause, incur the suspicion of being weak, envious, or malevo- 
lent. When the sympathetic ardor is terminated, the persons 
who have received this homage are, without any change of 
character, regarded, perhaps through life, as objects deserv- 
ing of no peculiar esteem or attachment." 

That Mr. Winthrop should not merely have long ago 

1 Rev. Timothy D wight, long President of Yale College, and a man 
of exceptional powers of observation, was a grandson of Jonathan 
Edwards and grandfather of the actual Yale President of the same name. 
His " Travels in New England and New York " were not published until 
1824, but were written much earlier. 



334 A MEMOIR OF 

copied this extract into his favorite common-place book, 
but have expressed the opinion in recent years that it 
has lost nothing of its appositeness by the lapse of time, 
suggests how miserably he fell short of ever having at- 
tained that chief est and choicest attribute of the typical 
Bostonian, a complacent and complete satisfaction with 
his or her surroundings. Nobody could see much of him 
without recognizing his deep attachment to his native 
place and his pride in many events of its history ; but 
this affection, it must be confessed, was neither indis- 
criminate nor unbridled. He was always a good deal 
of a cosmopolitan, liking variety and change, enjoying 
congenial society wherever he met with it, and by no 
means under the impression that his own neighborhood 
could fairly claim any approach to a monopoly of intelli- 
gence and cultivation. If, however, there were moments 
when the local atmosphere seemed to him a little narrow, 
a little dull, charged now and then with a tendency to 
mutual admiration and to make much of small things, 
pervaded more or less by a sort of hysteric sentimen- 
talism upon public questions or private grievances, — 
he had at least the grace to confine such indecent criti- 
cisms to the bosom of his family and cheerfully accept 
the situation. Handicapped as he was throughout the 
greater part of his life by very uncertain health, he 
labored under another disadvantage of which he was 
not so conscious, the lack of what a friend whom he 
much admired, the late Archbishop Tait, used to call 
" the sacred principle of delegation," the secret of never 
doing what one can get equally well done by others, 
thereby economizing valuable time. 1 He had an old- 

1 Davidson's " Life of Tait," vol. ii. p. 555. 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 335 

fashioned preference for doing things himself, and, in 
particular, for attending to his large correspondence 
single-handed, rarely, after his retirement from Con- 
gress, consenting to employ an amanuensis, — still more 
rarely, to leave any communication, however tedious or 
trivial, unacknowledged, and even systematically inves- 
tigating endless and often unworthy appeals for charity 
from strangers at a distance. In one of his familiar 
letters from Providence to John Winthrop the elder, 
Roger "Williams wrote : — 

"I thankfully acknowledge your wisdom and gentleness 
in receiving so lovingly my late rude and foolish lines. You 
bear with fools gladly because you are wise." 

I should be the last person to assert that this " bear- 
ing with fools gladly" (by which expression Roger, I 
imagine, had in view that patient endurance of cranks 
and bores which proceeds from innate goodness of heart) 
has been an unfailing characteristic of Governor Win- 
throp' s descendants, but in the subject of this memoir it 
was exemplified to a very marked degree, and the result 
was that, although he rose early and sat up late, taking 
a positive pleasure in hard work, he gave up so much of 
his time to others that he continually had to postpone 
matters in which he was personally interested and never 
found time to finish several biographical undertakings. 
To friendly remonstrances upon this subject he once 
replied, — and the answer is a key to much of his 
life: — 

The world is apt to rate men according to what they have 
done for themselves in the way of accomplishment or of 
acquisition ; or in proportion to what may have been done for 



336 A MEMOIR OF 

them in the way of preferment or of praise. A day will 
come when men will be valued according to what they have 
done for others — for God, in the way of obedience and ado- 
ration — and for their fellow-men in the daily duties of life, 
and in promoting the general welfare of society. A man who 
shuts himself up in his library and writes books may secure 
for himself a wider and longer notoriety. His name may 
be often met with in catalogues or on shelves. But the man 
whose voice or pen is ready for every good cause, whose 
counsel and encouragement are withheld from no worthy 
occasion or worthy object, and who seeks to promote the 
good of his fellow-creatures and the glory of God, by his 
daily life and conversation, and by such occasional efforts of 
the written or the spoken word as fall in his way, is not 
to be considered less entitled to distinction than a popular 
author. 

Laboriose nihil agens was his not infrequent and regret- 
ful description of himself in view of incessant and un- 
expected demands upon his time, but he was gratified 
by repeated evidences of a popular appreciation of his 
disposition to oblige, and was particularly pleased 
towards the last when one of the most valued of his 
Brookline neighbors and a greater sufferer than himself 
— our associate, Theodore Lyman — sent him from a 
sick-room the cheering message : " You never neglect 
a duty, and you never forget a friend." 

[Boston, May 21, 1889.] There has grown up here a cus- 
tom of devoting a good deal of space in the newspapers to the 
birthdays of local celebrities who have attained the dignity 
of octogenarians, and I have recently had my share — perhaps 
more than my share. Some of the leading articles were pleas- 
ant to read, in particular, the one in the ' Congregationalism' l 

1 It contained the following passage: "Mr. Winthrop's claim upon 
popular regard is by no means wholly in connection with public affairs 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 337 

I doubt, however, whether the average reporter knows much, 
or the average newspaper reader cares much, about the 
events of my career. Indeed, as to the political part of it, 
an old Whig who has never bowed the knee to Baal has 
become nearly as legendary as the Megatherium. But now 
and then I am pleasantly reminded of little feathers in my 
cap which I had almost lost sight of, as when Bennett Forbes, 
in the privately-printed Reminiscences I have just been 
reading, ascribes to me the passage of the Resolution which 
enabled him to take the ' Jamestown ' to starving Ireland, or 
when, in the recently published diary of Philip Hone, I find 
an enthusiastic account of a speech of mine in New York in 
1837. 1 I had many warm friends there at that time and long 
afterward. Indeed, I narrowly escaped being a New Yorker, 
my uncle John, the oldest of my grandfather's children, — 
who took his degree at Harvard as long ago as 1770, — having 
scandalized his relations in these parts by preferring to pitch 
his tent in New York, whither he persuaded several of his 
brothers to follow him. Even my father at one time hesi- 
tated, and I have often speculated on the difference it might 
have made to me. I incline to think I might have liked New 
York as well — perhaps better; such things are much a 
matter of early association. Of the luxurious, ultra-fashion- 
able society which has developed itself there since the war, 
I know little or nothing, but in my day there were most at- 
tractive, unpretending people to be met with, and I have no 
doubt that similar circles still exist. Eighty years ago, when 
I was born, the difference between the two places was not 
nearly so great as it now is, New York having become more 

or historical literature. He has ever been one of the most loyal, humble 
and consistent Christian men among us — one never ashamed of his pro- 
fession of faith, or afraid to speak boldly in favor of vital godliness. 
Men of all denominations rejoice to do him honor; for to him the hoary 
head is a crown of glory, being found in the way of righteousness." 

1 Mr. Hone wrote : " Robert C. Winthrop is a fine fellow and a true 
Whig. His speech was one of the finest I ever heard, and would have 
done credit to Clay or Webster." 

22 



338 A MEMOIR OF 

and more a huge metropolis, while Boston, in spite of its 
growth and many attractions, remains, as it always was, dis- 
tinctly provincial. 

[Aug. 28, 1891.] I am disposed to consider Benjamin 
Harrison the ablest off-hand platform-speaker now living, so 
far as I have any knowledge of them. Depew seems to be 
little more than a humorist, and Gladstone, to my mind, is 
greater in every other way than as an orator. I have repeat- 
edly heard him pour forth floods of talk — in the House of 
Commons and elsewhere — but while I was always interested 
and generally instructed, I failed to be impressed by his elo- 
quence. Nor can I think him an altogether safe political 
guide, but he is a wonderful man in many ways and delight- 
ful to meet at his own table. ... In spite of Huxley's at- 
tacks upon what he calls the Miltonian theory, take my word 
for it, Milton and Moses will survive Huxley and Darwin. 
I have just read over again, in the original Greek, the twen- 
tieth chapter of St. John's Gospel, to me the most delightful 
chapter in the Bible — so exquisite, so vivid, so convincing. 
I never read it without fresh emotion. Nothing but Truth 
can account for such a description. Nothing but Truth, 
indeed, can account for the Bible, as a whole, — and I pity 
those who lose their relish for it or their faith in it. 1 

At the time of his death he was in his sixtieth year 
of service as a vestryman of Trinity Church, Boston, 2 

1 He elsewhere wrote on the same subject : — The Bible is its own 
best witness. Its very existence after so many ages, its miraculous com- 
position by those inspired men, and its marvellous preservation from all 
the accidents of time and chance, bespeak nothing less than the hand of 
God. No evolution produced that volume ; and no revolution of thought, 
or act, or human will, can ever prevail against it. Revisions and new 
versions may improve, or may impair, the letter, but they can never 
change its essential character. The Gospel of Jesus Christ, through 
which he brought life and immortality to light, like its Divine Author, is 
"the same yesterday, to-day, and forever." 

2 This should be qualified by mentioning that, about half a century 
ago, he was ejected from office by what was then termed a " Puseyite 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 339 

but what is now technically known as "a Churchman " 
I am afraid he cannot truthfully be stated to have been 
for the space of sixty minutes — for while he preferred 
the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States to 
any other religious body of his acquaintance, he was un- 
able to perceive that it could justly claim to be styled 
"the Church of America." 

I am [he wrote in 1848, and of this mind he continued to 
the end] an Episcopalian of the Arnold and Whately school, 
with something more of the Paley admixture. I agree with 
Lord Bacon that unity does not necessarily mean uniformity, 
but if we are to aim at Christian unity, I am not in favor of 
letting prelatical assumption stand in the way of it. I do not 
fancy too much deference to the Church of England, however 
individually worthy of respect may be many of her chief pas- 
tors and teachers. We are not a branch of that Church, but 
an independent offshoot from it. 

Like an ancestor of his in Queen Elizabeth's time he 
was "a zealous favorer of the Reformed Faith," but 
while glorying in a Puritan ancestry he did not share 
the satisfaction experienced by so many pious souls in 
frequently nagging the Church of Rome, which he con- 
sidered to have become in his own day a bulwark of law 
and order in many parts of Christendom. Both inside 
and outside of his own communion his clerical intimacies 
covered a wide range : a Catholic Bishop of Boston 
(Fitzpatrick) who had been his schoolmate, and leading 
representatives of the great Evangelical sects of non- 
conformists, were his always welcome guests, while some 
of the friends upon whose advice he most relied, and for 

cabal," composed of some of his own friends, who relented and let him 
back a few months later. 



340 A MEMOIR OF 

whom he cherished the utmost esteem and affection, 
were Unitarian ministers, of the Conservative wing of 
that denomination. Although he had no taste for litera- 
ture in which the odium theologicum is unpleasantly mani- 
fest, he endeavored to familiarize himself with opposite 
shades of opinion, holding that in religious, as in secu- 
lar controversies, there is nothing more narrowing to 
the intellect than to confine one's self to the utter- 
ances of writers or speakers with whom one is in sub- 
stantial agreement. One of the greatest pleasures of 
the last four and twenty years of his life was in listen- 
ing to the sermons of Phillips Brooks, for whose charac- 
ter and career he had the warmest admiration, although 
their views upon most political, some social, and even 
a few religious questions, were by no means in har- 
mony. Aside from his love of fine Church music, he 
disliked all ceremonial which savored of sacerdotalism, 
yet no one better appreciated than he the self-denying, 
devoted lives led by many of the Ritualist clergy among 
the poor. As he wrote of another, he was emphatically 
a man of " Catholicity and Charity," God-fearing, care- 
ful of the feelings of others ; but he undoubtedly had his 
pet aversions, chief among which were positive philoso- 
phy and negative religion and that gradual substitution 
of Science for Faith, which leaves the latter at best a 
shadowy scheme of morals, and opens the way, as he 
believed, to every variety of infidelity and charlatanry. 
So far back as 1852, in his address to the Alumni of 
Harvard, he had said on this subject : — 

There are fields enough for the wildest and most extrava- 
gant theorizings without overleaping the barriers which sepa- 
rate things human and Divine. Indeed, I have often thought 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 341 

that modern science had afforded a most opportune and provi- 
dential safety valve for the intellectual curiosity and ambition 
of man, at a moment when the progress of education, inven- 
tion, and liberty had roused and stimulated them to a pitch 
of such unprecedented eagerness and ardor. Astronomy, 
chemistry, and, more than all, geology, with their incidental 
branches of study, have opened an inexhaustible field for 
investigation and speculation. Here, by the aid of modern 
instruments and modern modes of analysis, the most ardent 
and earnest spirits may find ample room and verge enough 
for their insatiate activity and audacious enterprise, and may 
pursue their course not only without the slightest danger of 
doing mischief to others, but with the certainty of promoting 
the great end of scientific truth. 

Let them lift their vast reflectors or refractors to the skies, 
and detect new planets in their hiding-places. Let them 
waylay the fugitive comets in their flight, and compel them 
to disclose the precise periods of their orbits, and to give 
bonds for their punctual return. Let them drag out reluc- 
tant satellites from ' their habitual concealments.' Let them 
resolve the unresolvable nebulce of Orion or Andromeda. 
They need not fear. The sky will not fall, nor a single star 
be shaken from its sphere. 

Let them perfect and elaborate their marvellous processes 
for making the light and the lightning their ministers, for 
putting ' a pencil of rays ' into the hand of art, and provid- 
ing tongues of fire for the communication of intelligence. 
Let them foretell the path of the - whirlwind and calculate 
the orbit of the storm. Let them hang out their gigantic 
pendulums, and make the earth do the work of describing 
and measuring her own motions. Let them annihilate hu- 
man pain, and literally ' charm ache with air, and agony 
with ether.'' The blessing of God will attend all their toils, 
and the gratitude of man will await all their triumphs. 

Let them dig down into the bowels of the earth. Let 
them rive asunder the massive rocks and unfold the history 



342 A MEMOIR OF 

of creation as it lies written on the pages of their piled up 
strata. Let them gather up the fossil fragments of a lost 
Fauna, reproducing the ancient forms which inhabited the 
land or the seas, bringing them together, bone to his bone, till 
Leviathan and Behemoth stand before us in bodily presence 
and in their full proportions, and we almost tremble lest 
these dry bones should live again. Let them put nature to 
the rack, and torture her in all her forms, to the betrayal of 
her inmost secrets and confidences. They need not for- 
bear. The foundations of the round world have been laid so 
strong that they cannot be moved. 

But let them not think by searching to find out God. Let 
them not dream of understanding the Almighty to perfec- 
tion. Let them not dare to apply their tests and solvents, 
their modes of analysis or their terms of definition, to the 
secrets of the spiritual kingdom. Let them spare the foun- 
dations of faith. Let them be satisfied with what is revealed 
of the mysteries of the Divine Nature. Let them not break 
through the bounds to gaze after the Invisible, — lest the day 
come when they shall be ready to cry to the mountains, 
Fall on us, and to the hills, Cover us ! l 

During the larger part of 1891 the condition of his 
heart made him a great sufferer, but his health improved 
in the following winter, and he was able in the spring 
of 1892 to pay his accustomed visits to New York and 
"Washington. On his return he had hardly established 
himself in Brookline for the summer when, on the six- 
teenth of June, a crushing blow fell upon him in the 
death of his wife, much younger than himself, after a 

1 It is quite enough to assume [he added long afterward] that in the 
absence of more positive light from above, the Divine is not to set limits 
to the human, in philosophy and science. But it can never be admitted 
that the human is to prescribe bounds to the Divine, — the finite to the 
Infinite! Anything can be comprehended more easily than a limited 
Omniscience, a restricted Omnipotence, a circumscribed Omnipotence. 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 343 

short illness. Dependent to an unusual degree upon a 
cheerful home, it so happened that his domestic life had 
been clouded at intervals by many sorrows, of which 
this last was the greatest, in view of his age and infirmi- 
ties, and the fact that during a union of nearly seven 
and twenty years they had been very rarely separated, 
her devotion to him having been only exceeded by his 
admiration of her. He seldom trusted himself to speak 
or write of this bereavement, but the spirit of resigna- 
tion he tried hard to exhibit is shown by the follow- 
ing extracts from two of his favorite authors, which he 
entered in a diary soon after the event : — 

However dark and profitless, howeve*r painful and weary 
existence may have become ; however any man, like Elijah, 
may be tempted to cast himself beneath the juniper tree and 
say, ' It is enough, now, O Lord ! ' — life is not done, and our 
Christian character is not won, so long as God has anything 
left for us to suffer or anything left for us to do. 

F. W. Robertson. 

One adequate support 
For the calamities of mortal life 
Exists, one only : an assured belief 
That the procession of our fate, howe'er 
Sad or disturbed, is ordered by a Being 
Of infinite benevolence and power, 
Whose everlasting purposes embrace 
All accidents, converting them to good. 

Wordsworth. 

It was his lot to survive this irreparable loss nearly 
two and a half years, gradually resuming his former 
occupations, and, to kill time, inventing new ones, such 
as contributing to " Scribner's Magazine " a little article 



344 A MEMOIR OF 

on the death of John Quincy Adams, and the longer one 
on Webster's methods of oratory to which I have before 
alluded, besides revising, adding to, and privately print- 
ing his " Reminiscences of Foreign Travel." For change 
of scene he passed the summers of 1893 and 1894 at 
Nahant, where the bracing air had often invigorated him 
in the distant past. People were very kind in calling 
to see him, and he was grateful for it, but he bored him- 
self extremely. He would have been bored anywhere. 
The interest in life had gone out of him, — mental 
depression and physical suffering remained. He missed 
more and more his early friends. The last of them 
with whom he hac} been in the habit of occasionally 
corresponding, Hamilton Fish, died in the summer of 
1893. 

I see [wrote Mr. Winthrop] a newspaper paragraph to the 
effect that, although Fish only left the State Department in 
1877, not one average reader in a hundred could have told 
whether he was alive or dead. This might well be true of 
me, but it ought not to have been true of him. He rendered 
important public services, and my whole intercourse with him, 
stretching over more than half a century, always renewed 
and confirmed my impression of the sturdy honesty of his 
character. 1 

1 As another instance of the evanescence of even local reputations, it 
occurs to me to mention that, on the morning after Mr. Winthrop's death, 
I was somewhat beset by reporters, — all intelligent young men, but 
several of them a little in the dark as to the antecedents of the subject of 
their inquiries. " I believe," remarked one to me, " that I am accurate 
in stating that Mr. Winthrop was a distinguished past Commander of 
the Grand Army of the Republic ? " I replied that he could claim no such 
distinction. "Surely," said another, "I am right in describing him as 
the chosen co-worker of Charles Sumner?" I gently suggested that 
"political antagonist" would be a safer designation. A third brought 
me a galley-proof, with the conspicuous double-leaded head-line : "Death 
of an Old Abolition War-Horse ! " This was cruellest of all. 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 345 

In the autumn of 1893 he was well enough to meet 
the Peabody Trustees in New York, and afterward 
passed a fortnight in Berkshire. In November he took 
some part in the special meeting of this Society which 
commemorated his friend Francis Parkman, and he was 
present at the official reception given by Dr. Ellis after 
our annual meeting in April, 1894, having in the pre- 
ceding month made a short address to the Bible Society, 
which proved to be the last of his public utterances. In 
the summer he perceptibly failed. 

I am told [he wrote at Nahant on the 23d of August] that 
my miserable condition is due, for the most part, to my being 
in my eighty-sixth year. I cannot push back the dial, but 
oh, that I could have what Keble describes : — 

' Such calm old age as conscience pure 
And self-commending hearts endure 
Waiting their summons to the sky, 
Content to live, but not afraid to die.' 

I am harassed by no twinges of conscience, and I am not 
afraid to die, but I am weary, weary of the life I lead. My 
heart is in such a state that for years I have not had a good 
night's rest without narcotics, — and these now produce little 
or no effect upon me. I sleep, if I sleep at all, in a chair, or 
propped up by pillows. I have other ailments which require 
the constant attendance of a surgical nurse. I am very deaf, 
often depressed, — sometimes, I fear, impatient, — conscious 
that I am a burden to my daughter, upon whom the responsi- 
bility of taking care of me chiefly falls. It is hard, too, to be 
able to do so little when I have been accustomed to do so 
much, and to feel that I am no longer of the smallest use in 
the world. There is nothing left but to have faith in God's 
Providence and trust in Him to the last. Sursum corda ! 

His strength of will enabled him to prepare again to 
meet the Peabody Trustees in New York in October, and 



346 A MEMOIR OF 

it was only the day before his intended departure that 
his physician forbade the journey. A few weeks later 
it was thought prudent to bring him to town from 
Brookline, though he seemed in no immediate danger 
and was able to come downstairs. Gradually, however, 
his mind began to wander, and on the afternoon of 
Tuesday, November fourteenth, he sat for the last time 
in his study in Marlborough Street, 1 turning over the 
leaves of his favorite hymn-book, but unable to collect 
his thoughts. That evening he lost consciousness, pass- 
ing away, without apparent suffering, forty-eight hours 
later. 

By his first marriage he had four children, three sons 
and a daughter. His eldest son died in infancy ; the 
second, for many years a member of this Society, is the 
compiler of this memoir ; the youngest, the late John 
Winthrop of Stockbridge, sometime a member of the 
Massachusetts Legislature and a man of widespread 
personal popularity, followed his father to the grave in 
less than a year. He left also three grandchildren and 
two step-children, — a son of his second wife and a 
daughter of his third, — to all of whom he was tenderly 
attached. In earlier life he had looked forward to being 
eventually laid with his parents, several of his brothers 
and sisters, and some earlier generations of his family, 
in an ancient tomb in King's Chapel burial-ground ; but 
when the growth of Boston rendered interments undesir- 
able in the heart of a business community, he built a simi- 

1 For some years after his first marriage he occupied No. 7 Tremont 
Flace, moving thence to No. 17 Summer Street. On his second marriage 
he migrated to No. 1 Pemberton Square, a house with which he was long 
associated ; but for the last twenty years of his life his winter home was 
No. 90 Marlborough Street. 



ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 347 

lar tomb at Mount Auburn, over the doorway to which 
was placed a slab intended for an inscription to himself. 
Not long before his death I sounded him as to how this 
should be worded. " I leave that to you," he answered, 
" but make it short and comprehensive." I accordingly 
had the stone cut as follows : — 

ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 

Born May 12, 1809. 
Died November 16, 1894. 

eminent as a scholar, an orator, a statesman, 
and a philanthropist, — above all, a christian. 

This does not seem to me excessive, and I doubt 
whether he could be better described in fifteen words. 



INDEX. 



A. 

Abbott, Amos, 79. 

Aberdeen, Earl of, 64. 

Adams, Charles Francis, 44, 65, 76, 

141, 215, 278, 289, 295, 296, 298, 

300. 
Adams, Charles Francis, Jr., 316, 

328. 
Adams, John, 291, 295, 332. 
Adams, John Quincy, 7, 8, 21, 29, 

31, 32, 33, 36, 37, 38, 47, 48, 51, 

71, 74, 78, 81, 82, 84, 115, 295, 

300, 327. 
Agassiz, Louis, 233, 261, 281. 
Agriculture, 20, 159. 
Aiken, William, 279. 
Albert, Prince, 325. 
Alexander II., 307. 
Alger, William R., 197, 198. 
Allen, Charles, 44, 65, 103. 
American Academy, 300. 
Amory, William, 261. 
Anderson, Robert, 221. 
Andrew, John A., 213, 225, 233, 270. 
' Antislavery Standard,' 197. 
Appleton, Nathan, 1, 32, 85, 96, 167, 

187, 214, 223. 
Appleton, William, 167, 187, 214, 

Apthorp, William, 6. 

Armstrong, Samuel T., 20. 

Arnold, Matthew, 313. 

Arnold, Thomas, 339. 

Ashmun, George, 29, 55, 56, 71, 132, 

136. 
Aspinwall, Thomas, 261. 
Aspinwall, William H., 257, 262. 
Astor, John Jacob, 257. 
Astor, William B., 253. 
Aumale, Due d', 311. 



B. 

Bacon, Lord, 329. 

Bacourt, De, 312, 313. 

Badger, George E., 29. 

Baldwin, Roger S., 135. 

Baltimore ' Patriot,' 49. 

Baltimore ' Sun,' 145. 

Bancroft, George, 312. 

Banks, Nathaniel P., 198, 199, 200, 

202. 
Barbour, James, 11. 
Barnard, Daniel D., 33. 
Bates, Edward, 221. 
Bates, Isaac C, 29. 
Bayard, Richard H., 28. 
Beach, Erasmus D., 202. 
Bell, John, 212, 213. 
Bell, Luther V., 190. 
Bennett, James G., 249. 
Benton, Thomas H., 78, 126, 129, 

134, 195. 
Berrien, John M., 29, 138. 
Bible, the, 304, 305, 338. 
Bigelow, George T., 261. 
Bigelow, Jacob, 214. 
Birney, James G., 37, 76. 
Blackwood's Magazine, 232. 
Blagden, George W., 210, 261. 
Blaine, James G., 72, 73, 215, 295, 

296. 
Blair, Montgomery, 243. 
Blanchard, Eliza Cabot, 10, 32. 
Blanchard, Francis, 10. 
Blatchford, Samuel, 269. 
Bliss, Seth, 210. 
Blomfield, Charles James, 64. 
Boston, 20, 140, 223, 233-234. 
Boston ' Atlas,' 159. 
Boston ' Commonwealth,' 150, 157. 
Boston ' Congregationalism' 336. 



350 



INDEX. 



Boston 'Courier,' 55, 80, 108, 148, 

159, 186, 207, 209. 
Boston ' Daily Advertiser,' 249-257, 

282. 
Boston 'Journal,' 58. 
Boston Latin School, 6, 195, 298, 331. 
Boston Light Infantry, 10. 
Boston < Post,' 301. 
Boston Provident Association, 1G9, 

200, 299. 
Boston Public Library, 169, 200. 
Botts, John M., 184. 
Boutwell, George S., 145, 151. 
Bowdoin, James, 4, 95, 294, 295. 
Bowdoin, James, the younger, 5. 
Bowdoin, James (Winthrop), 5. 
Bowles, Samuel, 170. 
Boyd, Linn, 70. 
Brady, James T., 253. 
Breckinridge, John C, 215. 
Briggs, George N., 132, 133, 150, 167. 
Brooks, Phillips, 313, 314, 340. 
Brooks, Preston S., 184, 186. 
Brown, B. Gratz, 278, 280. 
Brown, John, 213, 214, 254. 
Brown, William J., 97, 98. 
Browning, Robert, 326. 
Buchanan, James, 78, 185, 186, 187, 

198, 204, 212, 215. 
Buckingham, Joseph T., 55, 56. 
Burlingame, Anson, 140, 141, 186, 

198, 202, 203, 204. 
Butler, Arthur P. 138, 186. 
Butler, Benjamin F., 241, 252, 262, 

280. 
Butler, Clement M., 133. 



C. 



Cabell, Edward C, 72, 80, 97. 

Cabot, Mary Anne, 10. 

Calhoun, John C, 15, 36, 44, 81, 

115, 116, 258, 259, 322. 
Cambridge University, 288. 
Cameron, Simon, 243. 
Campbell, Lewis I)., 97. 
Carlyle, Thomas, 303. 
Carroll, Charles, 11. 
Cary, Shepherd, 38. 



Cass, Lewis, 85, 126, 129, 215. 

Cavour, 211. 

Chandler, Peleg W., 182, 285, 286. 

Channing, Edward T., 7. 

Charity Bureau, 200, 299. 

Charleston ' Mercury,' 212. 

Chase, Salmon P., 135, 221, 243. 

Chastellux, Marquis de, 4. 

Choate, Joseph II., 320. 

Choate, Rufus, 31, 87, 125, 147, 186, 

187, 208. 
Circourt, Adolphe de, 311. 
Clark, John 1L, 134. 
Clarke, J. Freeman, 233. 
Clay, Henry, 1, 11, 12, 17, 23, 29, 
33, 36, 37, 81, 82, 86, 109, 110, 129, 
135, 136, 137, 139, 144, 147, 148, 
287, 298, 299, 322. 
Clayton, John M., 90, 93, 94, 95. 
Cleveland, Chauncey F., 97, 117. 
Cleveland, Grover, 325. 
Clifford, John H., 1, 22, 150, 151, 

161, 214, 278, 325. 
Clingman, Thomas L., 126. 
Cobb, Howell, 97, 98, 99, 101, 103, 

126. 
Cobden, Richard, 325. 
Colburn, Warren, 6. 
Collamer, Jacob, 75. 
Cocke, William M., 71. 

' Concordia,' 226. 

Congdon, Charles T., 205. 

Conrad, Charles M., 98. 

Coolidge, Mrs. Joseph, 291. 

Cooper, James, 135. 

Cooper, Peter, 201. 

Corcoran, William W., 322. 

Crawford, George W., 130. 

Creighton, Mandell, 321. 

Crittenden, John J., 148, 150, 151, 
161, 184, 202, 214, 226, 228, 239. 

Crowell, John, 97. 

Culver, Erastus D., 79. 

Curry, J. L. M., 321. 

Curtis, Benjamin R., 143, 145, 198, 
214, 261. 

Curtis, George T., 51, 111,132, 149. 

Curtis, George W., 258, 259. 

Gushing, Caleb, 89, 145, 261. 



INDEX. 



351 



D. 

Daly, Charles P., 257. 

Dana, Charles A., 241. 

Dana, Richard H., Jr., 140, 141. 

Darwin, Charles, 338. 

Davis, Henry Winter, 241. 

Davis, Jefferson, 138, 259, 262. 

Davis, John, 13, 20, 29, 135, 136, 

148, 149, 161, 166. 
Davis, John W., 72. 
Davis, Thomas Kemper, 8. 
Dayton, William L., 29, 149, 186. 
Deane, Charles, 274, 288, 316. 
Dennison, William, 243. 
Depew, Chauncey M., 238. 
Derby, Mrs. Richard, 96. 
Dexter, Franklin, 147, 241. 
Dexter, Henry, 309. 
Dickinson, Daniel S., 252. 
Disraeli, Benjamin, 303, 304. 
Dix, John A., 89. 
Doty, James D., 97. 
Douglas, Stephen A., 40, 42, 48, 165, 

215. 
Douglass, Frederick, 252, 263, 309, 

310. 
Downs, Solomon U., 137, 138. 
Dowse, Thomas, 164. 
Dufferin, Marquis of, 298. 
Dunbar, Charles F., 249. 
Duncan, James H., 136. 
Dwight, Timothy, 232, 233. 

E. 

Eastburn, John H., 299. 
Edwards, Jonathan, 333. 
Edwards, Thomas O., 76. 
Eliot, Charles W., 295. 
Ellis, George E., 316, 345. 
Ellsler, Fanny, 300. 
Emancipation, 220, 224, 229, 245, 

247, 287. 
Emerson, Charles Chauncy, 6, 8. 
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 6, 171, 172, 

233, 275, 277, 303. 
Episcopal Theological School, 282, 

318. 
Erving, George William, 37. 
Evans, George, 29. 



Evarts, William M., 289, 296, 297. 

Everett, Edward, 13, 20, 21, 22, 64, 
89, 140, 149, 156, 161, 162, 166, 
167, 180, 187, 196, 201, 209, 212, 
213, 214, 221, 225, 258, 261, 262, 
268, 303. 

Everett, William, 331, 332. 

Ewing, Thomas, 130, 135. 



Falkland, Lord, 205. 

Farragut, David G., 241. 

Faulkner, Charles J., 222. 

Fearing, Albert, 325. 

Felton, Cornelius C, 209, 223. 

Fessenden, William P., 243. 

Fillmore, Millard, 86, 126, 129, 130, 

131, 135, 150, 151, 157, 161, 185, 

187, 192, 228, 282. 
Fish, Hamilton, 195, 344. 
Fisher, John Carlton, 5. 
Fitzpatrick, John B., 339. 
Fletcher, Richard, 22. 
Follett, M. P., 77. 
Foot, Solomon, 51. 
Foote, Henry S., 126, 148. 
Forbes, Archibald, 307. 
Forbes, Robert Bennett, 337. 
Forney, John W., 252. 
Francis Joseph I., 211. 
Franklin Statue, 164, 187. 
Free-Soil Party, 88, 105, 106, 145, 

166, 188, 189. 
Fremont, John C, 186, 187, 222, 

240, 241. 
Frothingham, Nathaniel L., 210. 

G. 

Gales, Joseph, 129, 300. 
Gallatin, James, 253, 257. 
Gardiner, William H., 261. 
Gardner, Henry J., 198, 199. 
Gardner, Samuel P., 10. 
Garfield, James A., 300, 307. 
Garrison, WiUiam Lloyd, 252, 286. 
Giddings, Joshua R., 67, 68, 70, 71, 

75, 76, 78, 79, 80, 89, 90, 93, 99, 

103, 126. 
Gladstone, William E., 338. 
Goldthwaite, George, 195. 



352 



INDEX. 



Gould, Benjamin A., 6. 
Granger, Francis, 195, 228, 268. 
Granger, Gideon, 268. 
Grant, Ulysses S., 233, 241, 266, 

278, 279, 280, 281, 300. 
Gray, Francis C, 149, 195. 
Gray, John C, 05, 157. 
Gray, William, 261. 
Greele, Samuel, 5. 
Greeley, Horace, 211, 278, 279, 280, 

297, 331. 
Green, Samuel A., 321. 
Greene, Albert C, 135. 
Greenough, Richard S., 201- 
Grinnell, Henry, 257. 
Grinned, Joseph, 29, 75, 79, 130, 

L36, 107, 187, 214. 
Grinnell, Moses H., 29. 
Grote, George, 300. 

II. 

Hale, Artemas, 79. 

Hale, Charles, 182. 

Hale, John P., 135, 145, 165. 

Hall, A. Oakey, 249. 

Hall, J. Prescott, 89. 

Hall, Nathan K., 130. 

Hallam, Henry, 64. 

Hallett, Benjamin F., 203. 

Hamlin, Hannibal, 243. 

Hampden, John, 205, 300. 

Hancock, Winfield S., 300, 302. 

Harrison, Benjamin, 325, 338. 

Harrison, William Henry, 19, 23, 

24, 36, 89, 268. 
Hart, Albei't B., 77. 
Harvard Alumni Association, 156, 

227, 267, 298, 340. 
Harvard Club, 180. 
Harvard University, 7, 21, 169, 321, 

328, 330. 
Harvard Washington Corps, 7. 
Harvey, Peter, 132. 
Hasty Pudding Club, 4. 
Haven, Franklin, 132. 
Hawks, Francis L., 145. 
Hayes, Rutherford B., 296, 297, 

298, 300. 
Heard, John T., 202, 203. 
Henderson, John, 28. 



Hill, Hamilton A., 306. 

Hillard, George S., 182, 187, 202, 

209,261. 
Hilliard, Henry W., 97. 
History, 317, 318. 
Hoar, E. Rockwood, 231. 
Hoar, George F„ 322. 
Hoar, Samuel, 141, 145. 
Hoffman, Ogden, 29. 
Holland, Sir Henry, 311. 
Holmes, Isaac E., 29, 71, 72, 80, 97. 
Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 227, 233, 

234, 267, 297, 303. 
Hone, Philip, 337. 
Hopkins, Erastus, 141. 
Houston, John W., 79, 98. 
Houston, Samuel, 212. 
Howe, John W., 97, 99. 
Howe, Samuel G., 183, 184, 186. 
Hudson, Charles, 79, 151, 167. 
Hughes, John, 221. 
Hunt, Washington, 79, 180, 202, 

228. 
Hunter, Robert M. T., 215. 
Huntington, Daniel, 309. 
Huntington, Frederick D., 180. 
Huxley, Thomas, 338. 



Ingersoll, Charles J., 36, 42, 47, 49. 
Ingersoll, Joseph R., 51, 75. 
Irving, Pierre, 229. 
Irving, Washington, 229. 



Jackson, Andrew, 11, 14, 15, 16, 17, 

190. 
Jackson, Charles T., 190. 
Jackson, Edmund, 24, 25. 
Jackson, James, 261. 
Jay, John, the elder, 232. 
Jay, John, the younger, 241. 
Jay, William, 197. 
Jefferson, Thomas, 124, 291. 
Johnson, Andrew, 92, 93, 96, 103, 

198, 220, 235, 239, 269, 271. 
Johnson, Reverdy, 89. 
Jones, John W., 71. 
Juvenal, 321. 



INDEX. 



353 



K. 

Keble, John, 345. 

Kennedy, Andrew, 38. 

Kennedy, John P., 28, 29, 95, 204, 

210, 221, 312, 313. 
Ketchum, Hiram, 14, 125, 250. 
King, Daniel P., 79, 125. 
King, James G., 125. 
King, Thomas Butler, 121. 
Kirkland, John Thornton, 332. 
Know Nothing Party, 168, 209. 



Lansdowne, Marquis of, 64. 
Lawrence, Abbott, 22, 23, 24, 31, 

87, 91, 166, 180. 
Lawrence, Amos A., 207. 
Lawrence, William Beach, 297. 
Lee, John C, 10. 
Lenox, James, 201. 
Lieber, Francis, 326. 
Lincoln, Abraham, 51, 81, 88, 212, 

213, 215, 219, 220, 221, 222, 224, 

228, 229, 232, 235, 237, 238, 240, 
241, 242, 243, 244, 245, 257, 258, 
259, 261, 264, 265, 266. 

Lincoln, Ezra, 170. 

Lincoln, Levi, 27, 28, 149, 167, 186, 

229, 261. 

Long, John D., 314. 
Longfellow, Henry W., 233, 297. 
Loring, Charles G., 156, 185, 267. 
Loring, George B., 280. 
Lothrop, Samuel K., 299. 
Louis Philippe I., 64. 
Lowell, James Russell, 321. 
Lowell, Rebecca Russell, 10. 
Lunt, George, 208. 
Lyman, George W., 261. 
Lyman, Theodore, 336. 
Lyons, Lord, 222. 

M. 

Madison, James, 11, 20, 58, 59. 
Mann, Horace, 76, 92, 101, 125, 126, 

139, 145. 
Marcy, William L., 51. 
Marsh, George P., 51. 
Marshall, Thomas F., 33. 



Mason, James M., 136, 196, 197, 

198, 215, 222. 
Massachusetts Coalition, 141, 142, 

143, 146, 158, 163, 174. 
Massachusetts Historical Society, v, 

170, 230, 315-317. 
May, Samuel, 182. 
McClellan, George B.,233, 234, 235, 

236, 237, 239, 241, 243, 248, 252, 

257, 258, 260, 261, 262. 
McClelland, Robert, 70. 
McClernand, John A., 70. 
McDowell, Irvin, 233. 
McDowell, James, 92, 126. 
Mcllvaine, Charles P., 221. 
McLean, John, 82, 215. 
Meade, George G., 267. 
Mercier, Henri, 229. 
Merediths, the, 194. 
Metternich, 292. 
Mignet, 64, 311. 
Miller, Jacob W. 29. 
Milman, Henry Hart, 64, 269. 
Mills, John, 145. 
Milton, John, 35, 104-, 338. 
Monroe, James, 295. 
Moody, Dwight L., 297. 
Morehead, Charles S., 222. 
Morey, George, 147, 150, 157. 
Morgan, Edwin D., 228. 
Morris, Gouverneur, 332. 
Morton, Jeremiah, 97, 104. 
Morton, Marcus, 145, 190. 
Morton, W. T. G., 190. 
Moseley, William A., 51. 
Mott, Lucretia, 252. 
Mount Auburn, 347. 
Music, 195, 196, 207, 297, 303. 

N. 

Nahant, 187, 344, 345. 
Napier, Lord, 197. 
Napoleon III., 64. 
National Fasts, 218, 219. 
'National Intelligencer,' 199, 

257. 
Naushon Island, 159, 330. 
Newcastle, Duke of, 227. 
' New Englander.' 275. 
' New England Magazine,' 10. 



252- 



23 



/ 



354 



INDEX. 



New York, 337, 338. 
N. Y. ' American,' 325. 
N. Y. 'Journal of Commerce,' 210. 
N. Y. ' Herald,' 148, 150, 205. 
N. Y. < Round Table,' 266. 
N. Y. ' Times,' 199, 258, 260. 
N. Y. ' Tribune,' 205-209, 286. 
' North American Review,' 10, 232. 

O. 

Overseers of the Poor, 169, 170, 299. 
Owen, Allen F., 97. 

P. 

Paley, William, 305, 339. 

Palfrey, John G., 67, 68-70, 71, 75, 

76, 77, 151. 
Palmer ston, Lord, 227. 
Park, Edwards A., 187. 
Parker, Francis E., 299. 
Parker, Joel (Mass.), 210. 
Parker, Joel (N. J.), 257. 
Parker, Richard G., 7. 
Parker, Theodore, 141, 142, 182, 185. 
Parkman, Francis, 345. 
Payne, William W., 49, 50. 
Peabody, Ephraim, 96, 167, 185. 
Peabody, George, 273, 274, 275, 320. 
Peabody Museum, 274, 318. 
Peabody Trust, 274, 303, 318-321, 

345. 
Pearce, James A., 135, 136, 165, 195, 

215. 
Peck, Lucius B., 97. 
Peel, Sir Robert, 64. 
Peirce, Benjamin, 208. 
Pendleton, George H , 235, 241. 
Pendleton, John S., 83. 
Petigru, James L., 222. 
Phelps, Royal, 257. 
Phelps, Samuel S., 134, 135. 
Phi Beta Kappa, 7. 
Phillips, Stephen C, 44, 141, 145. 
Phillips, Wendell, 182, 185, 246. 
Pierce, Edward L., 55, 76. 
Pierce, Franklin, 162, 183, 194, 195. 
Pierian Sodality, 7. 
Pierrepont, Edwards, 229. 
Pike, James S., 108. 
Pius IX., 211. 



Plummer Professorship, 169. 

Polk, James K., 36, 37, 51, 84, 255. 

Pollock, James, 51. 

Porcellian Club, 7, 267. 

Potter, Emery D., 97. 

Powers, Hiram, 309. 

Pratt, Thomas G., 137. 

Prescott, William H., 197, 201, 303. 

Protestant Episcopal Church, 226, 

276, 282, 303. 
Purdy, Elijah F., 249. 
Pusey, Edward B., 300, 338. 

Q. 

Quincy, Edmund, 8. 

Quincy, Josiah,6,201,202, 226, 234. 

R. 

Ramsay, Alexander, 51. 

Rantoul, Robert, Jr., 21, 146. 

Raymond, Henry J., 269. 

Reeder, Andrew H., 185. 

Reid, Whitelaw, 241. 

Republican Party, 181, 186, 191, 193, 
204, 212, 238, 241-246, 248, 258, 
271, 278, 296, 302, 319, 325. 

Rice, Alexander H, 295. 

Rives, William C, 185, 210, 214. 

Bobbins, Chandler, 210, 261. 

Robertson, Frederick W., 313. 

Robinson, Charles, 185. 

Rochambeau, Marquis de, 311. 

Rockwell, Julius, 136, 151, 167, 180, 
312. 

Rogers, John Smyth, 5. 

Rogers, Samuel, 64. 

Root, Joseph A., 102, 105. 

Russell, Charles Theodore, 208. 

Russell, Earl, 227. 

Russell, Thomas, 1S2. 

Rynders, Isaiah, 249, 259. 

S. 

Saltonstall, Leverett, the elder, 21, 

22, 28, 30, 31, 67. 
Sanders, Charles, 199. 
Savage, James, 226, 281. 
Scheffer, Ary, 300. 
Schenck, Robert C, 51, 97. 



INDEX. 



355 



Scott, Walter, 277, 326. 
Scott, Winfield, 24, 82, 129, 136, 
150, 151, 154, 157, 158, 159, 161, 

183, 1S4, 215, 221, 228. 
Scribner's Magazine, 296, 343. 
Sears, Barnas, 303, 321. 
Seaton, William W., 94. 
Sever, James W., 199. 
Seward, William H., 135, 136, 165, 

184, 185, 205, 211, 212, 215, 220, 
221, 222, 228, 242, 246, 261, 271, 
331. 

Shaw, Lemuel, 21, 156. 
Shepperd, Augustine H., 75. 
Sheridan, Philip H., 257. 
Sherman, William T., 235, 241. 
Sidney, Algernon, 161, 321. 
Sinclair, John, 311. 
Slavery, 61, 90, 124, 203, 211, 247, 

255, 256, 287, 319. 
Slidell, John, 215, 222. 
Smith, Caleb B., 67, 68. 
Smith, Charles C, 316. 
Smith, John Cotton, 210. 
Smith, Joshua B., 286. 
Smith, Truman, 88, 129, 135. 
Soule - , Pierre, 138. 
Southard, Samuel L., 29. 
Sparks, Jared, 226. 
' Spiritualism,' 305. 
Sprague, Peleg, 214. 
Springfield ' Republican,' 157, 158. 
Stanhope, Earl, 311. 
Stanley, Arthur P., 298, 304, 311. 
Stanley, Lord, 64. 

Stanly, Edward, 97, 98, 109, 110,240. 
Stanton, Edwin M., 243. 
Stephens, Alexander H., 64, 91, 97, 

98, 262, 299. 
Stevens, Thaddeus, 269. 
Stevenson, Andrew, 7. 
St. Germans, Earl of, 227, 312. 
Stuart, Gilbert, 4. 
Sullivan, George, 5. 
Sullivan, William, 12. 
Sumner, Charles, 52-57, 65, 76, 80, 
88, 140, 145, 146, 147, 165, 182, 
184, 185, 186, 195, 198, 205, 212, 
215, 220, 241, 254, 261, 269, 270, 
279, 282-287, 297, 326, 344. 



Tait, Archibald Campbell, 334. 
Tallmadge, Frederick A., 257. 
Taney, Roger B., 78. 
Tappan, Benjamin, 5. 
Tariff, the, 325. 

Taylor, Zachary, 50, 83, 84, 85, 86, 

87, 89, 90, 94, 98, 109, 110, 111, 

112, 113, 127, 128, 130, 132, 135, 

143, 148, 150, 152, 153, 154. 

Temple, Elizabeth Bowdoin, 4, 210, 

305. 
Temple, Sir John, 4. 
Thayer, John E., 194, 268. 
Thiers, 64, 311. 
Thirlwall, Connop, 64. 
Thompson, Jacob, 35. 
Ticknor, George, 214, 261, 292, 303, 

321. 
Tilden, Samuel J., 295, 300. 
Tompkins, Patrick W.,71. 
Toombs, Robert, 61, 64, 75, 76, 91, 
93,94,97,98, 99, 100, 126, 129, 
131, 149, 220. 
Tract Societies, 210, 223, 233. 
Tuck, Amos, 67, 70, 71, 99. 
Tyler, John, 30, 31, 33, 35, 36, 44, 

131, 215. 
Tyndall, John, 281. 

U. 

< Uncle Tom's Cabin,' 159, 160. 
Upham, William, 135. 



Van Buren, John, 89. 
Van Buren, Martin, 18, 19. 
Venable, Abraham W., 127. 
Vinton, Alexander H., 282. 
Vinton, Samuel F., 51, 67, 72, 73, 

75, 79, 112, 113, 129. 
Von Hoist, Hermann, 107. 

W. 

Wade, Benjamin F., 241. 
Wadsworth, James, 229. 
Walker, James, 181. 
Walley, Samuel H., 149, 182, 183. 
Warren, Charles H., 162. 



356 



INDEX. 



Warren, John C ., 5. 

Washburn, Emory, 166. 

Washington, George, 15, 59, 174, 
193, 209, 308, 311, 315. 

Wayne, James M., 222, 228. 

Webster, Daniel, 8, 9, 12, 13, 16, 18, 
19, 20, 22, 23, 24, 29, 30, 32, 35, 
49. 57, 58, 64, 81, 82, 83, 86, 87, 
89, 94, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 
115, 116, 125, 126, 129, 130, 131, 
132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 143, 141, 
145, 148, 149, 151, 152, 153, 155, 
158, 159, 160, 161, 186, 250, 290, 
303, 322. 

Webster, Fletcher, 111. 

Wednesday Evening Club of 1777, 
329. 

Weed, Thurlow, 136, 221, 297. 

Welles, Laura Derby, 96, 214, 216. 

Welling, .lames C, 249. 

Wellington, Duke of, 61. 

Whately, Richard, 61, 339. 

Whig Party, 12, 154-156, 173-177. 
337. 

' Whig Review,' 79. 

White, Hugh, 75. 

AVhite, Hush L., 19. 

White, Richard Grant, 233. 

Whittier, John G., 171, 172, 285, 
286, 297,-315. 

Wilberforce, Samuel, 64. 

Wilmot, David, 43, 80, 117. 

Williams, Roger, 300, 335. 

Wilson, Henry, 57, 72, 125, 134, 141, 
113. ins, 170, 171, 198,203, 204, 
212, 215, 220, 280, 281, 286, 287. 

Winsor, Justin, 301. 

Winthrop, Adele G., 268, 270, 343. 

Winthrop, Francis William, 5, 210. 

Winthrop, Frederick, 261. 

Winthrop, Grenville T., 5. 

Winthrop, John, the elder, 3, 230, 
231. 2:1 J. 2i!0, 332, 335. 

Winthrop, John, the younger, 4. 

Winthrop. John (2), 337, 346. 

Winthrop, John T., 5. 

Winthrop, Robert C. Extracts 
from his private letters and 
diaries, passim. His preferences 
with regard to this memoir, 1-3. 



Parentage and early education, 
3-6. Career at Harvard, 6-8. Le- 
gal studies, early occupations, 
marriage, 8-11. Entrance into 
politics, early speeches and politi- 
cal papers, 11-14. Extracts from 
speeches in Presidential campaign 
of 1836, 14-19. Service and Speak- 
ership in Massachusetts Legisla- 
ture, intimacies, non-political ad- 
dresses, 19-34. Election to Con- 
gress and correspondence with 
leading abolitionists, 24-26. Early 
Congressional life and speeches, 
26-33. Death of wife, 32. Ex- 
tract from speech on Right of 
Petition, 33-35. Texas Resolu- 
tion and speech, 35, 38. Speeches 
on the Oregon Rill, with extracts, 
36, 38-43, 47-49. His amend- 
ment to the Oregon Bill, or 
" Winthrop proviso " so-called, 
43, 80. His " However-bounded " 
toast and reasons therefor, 44, 
45. His Arbitration Resolu- 
tions, 46. Tariff speeches, 20, 
31, 50, 325. The War Bill con- 
troversy and the bitterness it 
engendered, with extract from 
speech at Whig State Conven- 
tion of 1846, 50-57. Extracts 
from speeches on the Mexican 
War, with proviso moved by him, 
58-64. First visit to Europe, 64. 
His course at Whig State Conven- 
tion of 1847, with extract from 
speech at Faneuil Hall, 65-67. 
Election as Speaker of the Thir- 
tieth Congress, with extract from 
speech on taking the chair, 67-74. 
Correspondence with John G. Pal- 
frey, 68-70. Composition of his 
committees, 74-77. A local griev- 
ance, official precedence, 77, 
78. Renewal of War Bill con- 
troversv, 78-80. Social life in 
Washington, 28-30, 81. Death 
of John Quincy Adams, first 
Washington Monument oration, 
Presidential election of 1848, 82- 



INDEX. 



357 



91. Stormy scenes at close of 
Thirtieth Congress, 91-93. In- 
tercourse with General Taylor, 
93-95, HS.^ Second marriage, 95. 
Defeat for re-election to the 
Speakership, with numerous ex- 
tracts, 97-101. Impoi'tance at- 
tached by him to his speech 
entitled ' Personal Vindication,' 
Feb. 21, 1850, and passages there- 
from, 102-108. His course on the 
Compromise measures and inter- 
course with Webster relating 
thereto, 109-115, 125-126. Death 
of Calhoun, and tribute to, 115, 
116. Extracts from speech on 
the Compromise, May 8, 1S50, 
116-125. Death of Taylor, and 
tribute to, 127-129. Relations to 
Fillmore and Webster at this 
period, 130-133. Succeeds Web- 
ster in the Senate, 133-134. Sena- 
torial debates on the Compromise, 
with extracts from correspond- 
ence relating to his course, 134- 
142. Defeat of Massachusetts 
Whigs, 143-146. Candidacy for 
Governor, 147-151, 157. Corre- 
spondence with Webster in 1852, 
151-154. Extract from speech 
in support of General Scott, 
154-156. Alumni address, 156, 
157, 340. Death of Webster, 160. 
Elected at head of Scott Electoral 
ticket in Massachusetts, but de- 
clines further candidacies and 
appointments, 161, 166, 167, 181, 
201, 204. Speeches and addresses 
in 1854-1855, 163-165. Know- 
Nothing overtures, 168. Public 
duties not connected with poli- 
tics, 169. Declines to join the Re- 
publican party, with extracts from 
his Letter on Fusion, 170-1 SI. 
Assault on Sumner and Kansas 
agitation, 182-185. Presidential 
election of 1856, with extracts 
from his speech in Faneuil Hall, 
186-194. Bunker Hill episode, 
196-198. State canvass of 1857, 



199, 200. State canvass of 1858, 
with extracts pro and con, 202- 
209. Non-political addresses, first 
sermon, 209, 210. Second ab- 
sence in Europe, 211, 212. Presi- 
dential election of 1860, with 
extract from speech in Music 
Hall, 212-214. Efforts for peace, 
214-216. Illness and death of S 
wife, 214, 216. Patriotic hymn, 
217, 218. Views of Civil War, 
speech on Boston Common, sum- 
mons to Washington, 219-222. Ill 
health, extracts from speeches, let- 
ters and diaries in 1862-1863, 223- 
229. ' Life and Letters of John 
Winthrop,' 230-232. Extract from 
speech in May, 1864, 231, 232. 
Presidential campaign of 1S64, 
with extracts from speeches in 
support of General McClellan and 
comment thereupon, 234-262. 
Heads Democratic Electoral ticket 
in Massachusetts, 258. Death of 
Everett, 262. Utterances in 1865, 
death of Lincoln, 263-268. Third 
marriage, 268. Johnson's admin- 
istration, Philadelphia Conven- 
tion, final retirement from poli- 
tics, 268-273. Intimacy with 
George Peabody, third absence 
in Europe, 273, 274. Plymouth 
oration, with extract, 275-277. 
Grant versus Greeley, 278-281. 
Utterances in 1873-1874, includ- 
ing tribute to Charles Sumner 
and comment thereupon, 281-287. 
Fourth absence in Europe, 2S8. 
Extract from his Centennial ora- 
tion, July 4, 1876,289-295. Tilden 
Letter, 295, 296, Webster statue 
address in New York, and ut- 
terances in 1876-1878, 296-29S. 
Tribute to, on retirement from 
Presidency of Boston Provident 
Association, 299. Centennial of 
American Academy, readiness in 
old age, 300, 301. Hancock Letter, 
301, 302. Bunker Hill address, 
306. Yorktown oration, with ex- 



358 



INDEX. 



tract, 305-309. Frederick Doug- 
lass episode, 309, 310. Fifth and 
last absence in Europe, 311. 
Second Washington Monument 
oration, 311, 312, 314, 315. Al- 
leged defiance of moral sense of 
Massachusetts, 312. Narrow es- 
cape from death, 313, 314. Retire- 
ment from chair of Massachusetts 
Historical Society, with matters 
incident thereto, 315-317. His 
services to Southern education, 
318-321. Jubilee ode and other 
verses, 323-325. His views on 
many subjects, fiscal, literary, 
educational, national, and local, 
325-328, 330, 331, 333-336. His 
habits and tastes, 329, 330, 335, 
336. His religious opinions, 276, 
277, 297, 304, 338-342. Death 
of wife, 343. Closing years, last 
illness, immediate family, and 
epitaph, 343-347. Portraits, busts, 
and engravings of him, 309, v-vi. 
His publications, 3, 7, 13, 20, 46, 
53, 73, 85, 107, 111, 134, 139, 164, 
169, 172, 1S5, 200, 209, 221, 230, 



265, 274, 282, 288, 296, 298, 344. 
His « Works,' so-called, 321, 322. 
His satisfaction with his political 
record, 258, 312. Occasional esti- 
mates of him by contemporaries, 
from 1833 until his death, both 
complimentary and otherwise, 2, 
31, 33, 36, 38, 43, 49, 50, 57-58, 99, 
108, 109, 125, 126, 127, 133, 134- 
150, 157, 158, 179, 180, 232, 249- 
257, 259-201, 262, 266, 272, 275, 
279, 285, 286, 299, 306, 310, 312, 
313, 315, 316, 320, 322, 323, 325, 
328, 331, 332, 336, 337, 344. 

Winthrop, Theodore, 258, 259. 

Winthrop, Thomas L., 4, 5, 7, 31, 
45, 328, 329. 

Winthrop, Thomas L., Jr. , 4. 

Winthrop College, 319, 320. 

Wise, Henry A., 33. 

Wood, Fernando, 228, 249, 259. 

Woodward, Joseph A., 97. 

Worcester « Spy,' 133. 

Wordsworth, William, 331, 343. 

Wright, Isaac H., 206, 207, 208. 

Wyman, Jeffries, 318. 



Addresses and Speeches by Hon. Robert C. 
Winthrop on Various Occasions. 1835-1886. 
In four Tolumes. 8vo. Little, Brown, & Co., 
Boston. 

Life and Letters of John Winthrop, Governor 
of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. 1588-1649. 
By Hon. Robert C. Winthrop. In two vol- 
umes. 8vo. Little, Brown, & Co., Boston. 

Washington, Bowdoin, and Franklin, as por- 
trayed in Occasional Addresses. By Hon. 
Robert C. Winthrop. 8vo. Little, Brown, 
& Co., Boston. 1876. 

Reminiscences of Foreign Travel. A Fragment 
of Autobiography. By Robert C. Winthrop. 
8vo. Privately Printed. John Wilson & Son. 
1894. 

Tributes of the Massachusetts Historical So- 
ciety to Robert C. Winthrop. 8vo. John 
Wilson & Son. 1894. 

A Memoir of Robert C. Winthrop. Prepared 
for the Massachusetts Historical Society by 
Robert C. Winthrop, Jr. 8vo. Little, Brown, 
& Co., Boston. 1897. 



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